[Boot-Repair] Graphical tool to repair the PC boot in one click

[bcschmerker]

Thanks for the information on an additional item for the X.org toolbox. As of March 2014, I'm looking for specific new pieces of hardware for upgrading two computers plus building a third, and the Boot-Repair tool is a definite to-consider for situations where things fail to respond after all Modules are called up.

For the new system, most new motherboards packing a planar EIA-232/EIA-574 asynchronous-serial header, I'm also on the hunt (no joy as of 12 March 2014) for a compact-enough 80x24-character serial-terminal subsystem to mount inside a double-width server case along with a stack of SATA hard drives, a SATA super-multi optical drive, a dual-floppy drive (for 5-1/4" double- and high-density 80-cylinder floppies plus double- and quad-density 3-1/2" 80-cylinder disquettes) daisy-chained off a firmware-upgraded Catweasel® PCIe x1 disquette controller (I'd like some diagnostic capabilities consistent with the latest KryoFlux® software), and a USB multi-format memory-card reader/writer; I've planned on a discrete PCIe x16 GPU card with at least 1 GB GDDR5 video memory and a PCIe x1 super-I/O for additional EIA-232 and/or -574 serial ports plus an IEEE 1284 enhanced parallel port (pref. with a 36-pin mini-Centronics rather than a DB-25S).

[mintnoob2329]

@oldfred

Thank you so much for that guidance, I think I have a much better sense now of how to approach this problem.

I managed to get back into windows by running the "restore efi backups", and disabled fast shutdown.

I ran recommended boot-repair on my live usb again, and when I boot hard drive linux mint from the boot order, I get a different grub command line screen. This one doesn't mention "grub rescue", but it isn't the proper grub boot screen either. Maybe it is the grub 2.00 rescue screen, as it reads grub 2.00 at the top while the last one didnt.

New pastebin: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7082705/

I said "no" to the "back and rename windows efi files" as you said. I think the remaining issue is with the /grub/shim as you also mentioned, and which the new pastebin indicates: "Please do not forget to make your BIOS boot on sda2/EFI/linuxmint/shimx64.efi file!". I'm not sure how to do this however, I don't see a pathchanger in boot-repair.

And if I do need to boot to sda2 as it seems to say, does that mean that my properly dual-booting w8/mint15 system would boot with windows boot manager, because sda2 is my windows partition? Or is this wrong and the two operating systems should ultimately boot from grub(2)?

[cfortier2]

Good morning,

I have Win7 machine that I am attempting to reformat and install Ubuntu however I keep getting "Error 1962: No operating system found. Press any key to repeat boot sequence." I attempted boot-repair with the default options and it did not solve the problem. Here is the paste: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7084707/

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

[oldfred]

@mintnoob2329
You have to choose in UEFI menu or one time boot key. Best to also change boot order to make Linux first.
You may only see the text entry linuxmint in your UEFI menu, but that is your shim file:
Line 1144:

Boot0005* linuxmint HD(2,1f4800,82000,1d587c74-3ce5-499c-9922-83b93037074b)File(EFIlinuxmintshimx64.efi)

Your sda2 is the efi partition. With UEFI all systems install boot files into separate folders in the efi partition. Somewhat like having an unlimited number of MBR with old BIOS boot system and a different system in each.

@cfortier2

You show ubuntu in UEFI.

BootOrder: 0001,0008,0009,0007,0000,000A
Boot0000* elementary
Boot0007* Realtek PXE B02 D00
Boot0008* HITACHI HTS725050A7E630
Boot0009* Generic Flash Disk 8.07
Boot000A* UEFI: Generic Flash Disk 8.07
Boot0001* ubuntu

You do only show Ubuntu installed so the other boot options may give that error of missing system. Can you choose ubuntu entry in UEFI menu or one time boot key?
But some vendors have modified UEFI to only boot Windows. If that is the case you do need to rename Windows efi file to be shim. That is the 'buggy' UEFI fix in Boot-Repair.

@bcschmerker
That seems like a lot of legacy hardware. May be time to upgrade. Or you will have to find converter boards & adapters.

I did put a 3.5" floppy in my current desktop in 2006 and think I have only used it twice mostly just to see if it still works. I now use flash drives. I did find some sold serial & parallel cables in my junk box and wondered why I still had them as I have nothing that can use them, everything is USB now.

[EricMWalton]

Hi all, first-timer on Linux and trying to set up a dual-boot Ubntu + Windows 7, so naturally I've got a lot to learn. That said, I've had problems from the beginning. Over the last week, I've tried lots of things (boot-repair x2, a windows boot repair as well) and this is the latest result:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/7085250/

I have 3 hard drives. Intended; 256GB for linus, 128GB windows, 3TB files. As you can see, there are a couple extra partitions in the 256GB SSD, but that's the ubuntu, and I'm afraid to mess with it.

At the moment the problem is right after the BIOS screen the computer either hangs on a blank screen, streams an endless stream of nonsense lines like this:

E[ PMC] unknown intr 0x44000000
E[ PMC] unknown intr 0x44000000
E[ PMC] unknown intr 0x44000000
E[ PMC] unknown intr 0x44000000
E[ PMC] unknown intr 0x44000000
...

or works fine. Whenever it doesn't work I simply push reset and then it works, though I have to boot ubuntu in recovery mode.

Usually if I restarted the computer (as opposed to power off/power on) it works.

Thoughts? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[oldfred]

@EricMWalton
Not familiar with those error messages.

But you have a strange way to boot Ubuntu in BIOS mode when Windows is in UEFI mode.
You have a Windows boot loader in the MBR of sdc and that will look for more boot code in the PBR or partition boot sector of the partition with the boot flag. That is how Windows normally boots in BIOS mode. But then you installed grub to the PBR so grub does boot. Grub does not like to be forced into a PBR as it does not really fit and converts to blocklists or hard coded addresses. If any grub file moves on drive on update or even a fsck then you have to reinstall grub.
Since you have multiple drives, better to have grub in MBR of sdc if you want to BIOS boot.

But since Windows is UEFI boot with gpt partitioning and storage drive is gpt I would reformat sdc, partition with gpt and use UEFI. I also prefer to have an efi partition on sdc, so system actually can boot only from sdc, default would be to install grub to sda and then both sda & sdc have to work to boot Ubuntu.

More info on dual UEFI booting in link in my signature.


For the Total space you want for Ubuntu:
Ubuntu's standard install is just / (root) & swap, but it is better to add another partition for /home if allocating over 30GB.:
Only if gpt - all partitions in gpt are primary:
gpt: 300 MB efi FAT32 w/boot flag (for UEFI boot or future use for UEFI, you only can have one per drive, so if already existing do not attempt another)
gpt: 1 MB No Format w/bios_grub flag (for BIOS boot not required for UEFI)
for gpt(GUID) or MBR(msdos) partitioning
Ubuntu partitions - smaller root only where hard drive space is limited.
If total space less than about 30GB just use / not separate /home or standard install.
1. 10-25 GB Mountpoint / primary or logical beginning ext4(or ext3)
2. all but 2 GB Mountpoint /home logical beginning ext4(or ext3)
3. 2 GB Mountpoint swap logical

Depending on how much memory you have you may not absolutely need swap but having some is still recommended. I do not hibernate (boots fast enough for me) but if hibernating then you need swap equal to RAM in GiB not GB. And if dual booting with windows a shared NTFS partition is also recommended. But you usually cannot create that as part of the install, just leave some space. Or partition in advance (recommended).
One advantage of partitioning in advance is that the installer will use the swap space to speed up the install. Thanks Herman for the tip.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DiskSpace
suggested partitions for just Ubuntu on 3TB drive.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/33643...rtition-scheme
Another advanced suggestion from TheFu with Multiple / (root) - Post #5 similar to what I actually do
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2170308
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2021534

I also like to have an install on every drive. Then if one drive fails I can boot the other drive, even if it gives messages about a data partition not mounting.

Creating a Dedicated Knoppix Partition for large drives
http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux..._partition.htm
Except I have multiple Ubuntu installs and rotate newest install from drive to drive.

[mintnoob2329]

@mintnoob2329
You have to choose in UEFI menu or one time boot key. Best to also change boot order to make Linux first.
You may only see the text entry linuxmint in your UEFI menu, but that is your shim file:
Line 1144:


Your sda2 is the efi partition. With UEFI all systems install boot files into separate folders in the efi partition. Somewhat like having an unlimited number of MBR with old BIOS boot system and a different system in each.

Sorry, I still don't understand. I have chosen the text entry linuxmint as the os to boot into and the boot order has linuxmint first but I just get the grub 2 prompt. Do I need to set or configure some options in the grub 2 prompt in order to boot properly? I am learning the grub2 available commands here from the GNU GRUB manual.

By following autocomplete with 'tab' 'tab' I am able to display path boot/efi/linuxmint/shimx64.efi. First I need to load the kernel, I think, using something like linux /vmlinux root=(hd0,gpt8) ro quiet splash and then boot into (hd0,gpt2)/efi/linuxmint/shimx64.efi. I'm not really experienced with this and am a bit precarious of causing a kernel panic or something, so perhaps I should just try to reinstall linux mint on gpt8 and see if grub2 gets properly placed?

EDIT: I set prefix=(hd0,gpt8)/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/ , b/c that is where my .mod files are. My root = hd0, gpt2 , which is my efi partition. Should I set this to gpt8, my linux mint partition, and then try to use linux command to load kernel and boot? I did this:
set root=(hd0,8)
linux (hd0,gpt8)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda8
initrd initrd.img
boot

and my screen just printed out a bunch of stuff and went dark. Turned off and on, and my prefix has been reset to (hd0,gpt2)/EFI/ubuntu and root=hd0,gpt2. I've tried this with various combinations and my screen just goes dark and I'm back at square one.

[oldfred]

@mintnoob2329
Are you getting grub> or grub rescue> ? Those indicate some issue with your install of grub.
You can try a full uninstall and reinstall of grub which Boot-Repair can help you with.
Only the grub/shim boot loader is in hd0,2 or gpt2, all of / (root) & /boot folder are in hd0,8 or gpt8 Which includes the rest of grub & kernels.
Some with UEFI have added a grub.cfg with just one line configfile to the efi partition. That helps a grub find its real grub.cfg in the install in /boot folder.
Create a grub.cfg file in your efi partition and add this one line entry, change gpt8 to your install.
configfile (hd0,gpt8)/boot/grub/grub.cfg
Another user posted this:

found that putting grub.cfg into /EFI/ubuntu works, even when grubx64.efi is in /EFI/Boot

Then if you have black screen it can be a video issues. At grub menu you may need nomodeset or other settings.

[DaNipper]

Hi - I'm at my wits end, and hoping someone can assist.

Almost a year ago, I upgraded my Lenovo U410 to Win 8.1, and it screwed up my dual boot setup with Ubuntu (actually Ubuntu Studio). As I was swamped at the time with work, I put it off and didn't deal with it. Now, I'm trying to fix it, and I don't even recall how it got screwed up. I believe, the Windows boot manager wasn't able to find linux, etc. Windows would boot fine, but Ubuntu wouldn't.

Then I did something dumb - I reformatted the partition that Ubuntu was originally on and tried to install Ubuntu on a newly formatted SSD drive. Still nothing. I then found this post which led me to Boot-Repair (which is a great tool).

After going through the thread, and following the steps, and using Boot-Repair, I've now gotten the reverse results. Where I couldn't boot into Ubuntu before, now I can - but only Ubuntu and not Windows. The exact opposite of the original issue. When I boot up, the GRUB menu comes up. When I select the Windows entry, it just reloads GRUB.

Here's the results of the boot-info: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7091445/

Any help would be greatly appreciated - I have windows applications that I desperately need for a project, and I'm a bit stressed out!

Thanks,

Nipper

[briktoo]

Hi, need some help with a boot issue. i used boot-repair and was directed here.
I cloned a disk with clonezilla. Now, when I boot from the new HDD I get the grub prompt. I can boot from a live USB and see the disk and files. I run boot-repair from the liveUSB and no changes are made. My patebin is here
http://paste.ubuntu.com/7096728/
sda should be my boot device

What do you suggest?

Thanks!