Grub re-install failed

[Phil Riegle]

Hello,
Had a working Win7/Ubuntu until installed a 2nd copy of Win7.
Tried the https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
and log is at: http://paste2.org/p/2604485
This did provide a Grub page with access to both Win7's but the Ubuntu it gave access to is mostly unusable.

The Ubuntu desktop picture is there but there is no strip of selections down the left side and no access to pull down menus or any commands. I have to force a shutdown at the power button because there is no 'shutdown' option.

I did try recovery mode and it appears to function properly. I tried the Grub reinstall from there, but when finishing booting, I still get the Ubuntu screen with no selections available.

Yes, it is regular dual boot, not Wubi.
I do not want to screw up too much else but was reading that maybe the original live CD would help.
Any thoughts?
Thanks

[darkod]

Something is weird. Look at the fdisk results, it says extended partition linking to another extended partition. I have never seen a message like that before.

Also, at the top it says grub2 is connected to sda6 when it should be sda5 because sda6 is the swap.

Can you try to boot the cd in live mode and in terminal try:

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

See if that helps.

[Phil Riegle]

Hi Darko,
Thanks for that but no joy. The commands seemed to run ok from the prompt and it said it completed the procedure after the second command. There was no reply after the first command. That was all from a live CD so I was running Ubuntu from the CD. Any other ideas? I have the Paragon HD utilities if that helps anything.
Thanks.

[darkod]

Were you doing any repartitioning to make space for the second win install?

It sounds like it's not a grub problem, it does manage to show the grub menu and to boot. But after it boots, it looks corrupted, not showing the desktop correctly.

How exactly and where did you install the second win? If you did some repartitioning that might have corrupted the ubuntu partition. Especially if done from windows.

[Phil Riegle]

Were you doing any repartitioning to make space for the second win install?

It sounds like it's not a grub problem, it does manage to show the grub menu and to boot. But after it boots, it looks corrupted, not showing the desktop correctly.

How exactly and where did you install the second win? If you did some repartitioning that might have corrupted the ubuntu partition. Especially if done from windows.

OK, that is sounding like what I did. The partition was created by MS support by supposedly taking from the original Win7 install. I was watching what they did remotely. But why would it corrupt the Ubuntu partition if it wasn't touched?

I don't really have anything that I absolutely need to save from Ubuntu but I wanted to not have to re-install it. I also have Win8 to put somewhere to try.

[darkod]

Are you sure they never touched the extended partition? Was it always 400GB as it is now?

Even if they never touched it, there is still chance to corrupt ubuntu because windows is not really aware of linux partitions. So, using windows partitioning tools when you have also linux partitions on the hdd could possibly corrupt it if it writed the partition table in a way linux won't understand it as before.
This is only a speculation at this moment, but I would bet on that.

I told you immediately, usually you never see a message like that "extended partition linking to another extended partition".

A HDD with msdos table can have only one extended partition, so how can it be linking one to another one. And if the extended partition (or simply how it's laid out in the table) is messed up, you can expect issues in ubuntu because it's installed inside it.

PS. The above is under the assumption they took space from the first win7 partition as you say. On the other hand, if they took space from the extended partition (shrinking it), that would definitely mess it up for sure.

[Phil Riegle]

So should I delete the Ubuntu partition and swap file partition and reinstall? Then later on if I want to do the Windows 8, I will make sure to follow the advice about creating a separate partition first or whatever the right way is.

[oldfred]

I have seen it before and some times just rewriting partition table with fdisk or fixparts fixes it. As long as there is some sort of corruption in partition table you will have issues. Many tools that try to use partition table see corruption and then do not work.

Extended partition linking to another extended partition
Your partition table is slightly messed up. But it should be easy to fix. Boot into Ubuntu with Supergrub

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/


sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Press "w". That rewrites the partition table. Reboot (using Supergrub) so that the changes take effect.


If Supergrub gets you into your install then you should be able to reinstall grub2's boot loader to the MBR with this:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda


Also fixparts fixs many partition table issues.

Fixparts - Repair broken partition tables (not overlapping issues) & delete Stray gpt data from MBR drives
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1705325
http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/
First backup partition table, use your drive for sdX or sda, sdb etc.
sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX > parts.txt

[Phil Riegle]

I have seen it before and some times just rewriting partition table with fdisk or fixparts fixes it. As long as there is some sort of corruption in partition table you will have issues. Many tools that try to use partition table see corruption and then do not work.

Extended partition linking to another extended partition
Your partition table is slightly messed up. But it should be easy to fix. Boot into Ubuntu with Supergrub

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/


sudo fdisk /dev/sda
Press "w". That rewrites the partition table. Reboot (using Supergrub) so that the changes take effect.


If Supergrub gets you into your install then you should be able to reinstall grub2's boot loader to the MBR with this:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda


Also fixparts fixs many partition table issues.

Fixparts - Repair broken partition tables (not overlapping issues) & delete Stray gpt data from MBR drives
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1705325
http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/
First backup partition table, use your drive for sdX or sda, sdb etc.
sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX > parts.txt

OK - Supergrub does not appear to work. I did the 'discover any O/S' and it went to the same crippled Ubuntu screen as before.

As for 'Fixparts', what am I backing up, just the sd5 with the Ubuntu or all the partitions? I'm still reading and learning about partitions, but I don't understand your statement:
First backup partition table, use your drive for sdX or sda, sdb etc.
sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdX > parts.txt
I believe that Linux uses format sda and windows uses sd1, correct?
Also, I guess I have to run the program in windows because my Ubuntu is not working, unless I boot from a live cd?
I will be downloading 'fixparts' and trying that.
Thanks.

[Phil Riegle]

Trying to figure out the 'Fixparts' program. Not sure which OS to run this from or where to put it to run it. Downloaded the windows version. Can't seem to read the readme.windows file.