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

[Shoushouwhatwhat]

@trogdor1138

So after reading what "YannBuntu" has linked about the meaning of the *.efi.bkp and *.efi.grb. Does that effect your suggestion to add, "custom.cfg" with Code:

menuentry "Windows Boot Test" { search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root CA62-F337 chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgr.efi } menuentry "2nd Windows Boot Test" { search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root CA62-F337 chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootx64.efi }
Hope to hear from you soon, and Thanks for your quick reply

[Meric2000]

Hi,
First of all thank you for reading this and being so awesome as to help others.

I am trying to setup a dual boot of Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 on a Lenovo Z580.
The windows was factory installed and did not come with a disk.

I made some space by shrinking the windows partition before using the automatic option of installing Ubuntu alongside of windows 8 using a live cd. Naturally there were issues with this install and I got a secure boot access denied error and then windows.

After using boot-repair (with shim secure boot support) from a live stick, I was able to load Ubuntu from a Grub menu even with UEFI and secure boot on. Here is the interesting part, after one use of Ubuntu 12.10, I can not boot up in Ubuntu again, grub will still load but the boot process will freeze either a purple or black screen.

Furthermore I can go to "Advanced options" and select the Ubuntu kernel I want to use and this will also get one and only one successful use.

I can go back with a live stick and run boot-repair again and the whole dance will repeat.

Here is the info on the boot.
http://paste.ubuntu.com/1416577/

Thanks again for even looking at this.
And thanks for developing this tool. It was wonderful to see Ubuntu load even if it only worked once because that is so much closer than not at all.

[Shoushouwhatwhat]

@Shoushouwhatwhat

It looks to me like your grub.cfg is listing the incorrect EFI files for boot. The first two entries reference EFI files, but they have a .BKP extension, which is weird. Maybe they're backups and not eligible for booting?

The last two look they're referencing the correct Windows partitions directly, which won't work since boot sectors aren't used for an UEFI install. I'm guessing your PC's EFI boot manager now points to the Windows Recovery EFI application instead of the boot manager, which is also unusual.

Regardless, could you please try adding the following to /boot/grub/custom.cfg (create it if it doesn't already exist):

menuentry "Windows Boot Test" {
search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root CA62-F337
chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgr.efi
}

menuentry "2nd Windows Boot Test" {
search --fs-uuid --no-floppy --set=root CA62-F337
chainloader (${root})/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootx64.efi
}

After adding the above, run:

sudo update-grub

I suspect that at least one of the two new entries should get you into Windows.

I tried them both, they both didn't work, I also tried this:
-------------------------------
menuentry "Windows 7" {
insmod part_gpt insmod chain set root='(hd0,gpt1)'
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.bkp
}
----------------

and that didn't work either I got a blue screen from it and then it returns to GRUB.

[oldfred]

Again only the entries Boot-Repair creates or you manually add should work.
Grub2's os-prober has a bug, and only creates a chain to the Windows partition like a BIOS boot not a UEFI boot. Chain entry has to be to the efi partition and the Windows efi file.

Wrong style chain boot entry
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...2/+bug/1024383


Can anyone boot from the UEFI menu directly into Windows. If not then the chainload entry from grub to that same Windows file will not work. Windows then needs repair. Windows always needs repairs after a resize and normally it used to automatically run chkdsk after a resize. Always best to resize from Windows MMC but not create partitions with Windows.
Not sure if you can also get to the Window repair console from UEFI separately or if it is still an f8 or other key now. Otherwise you need a separate Windows repairCD or flash drive.

And if you get a blue screen it sounds like grub has booted you into Windows. Its just that then grub has no control over Windows issues.

[Pardieu]

My system lubuntu 12.10 64 bit has been upgraded automatically today to the version 3.5.0.20 of the linux kernel.
After the reboot the system hangs with the message:
CIFS VFS: default security mechanism requested. The default security mechanism will be upgraded from ntlm to ntlmv2 in kernel release 3.3

Looking up in the internet, I remove my smb shares from fstab with a live-cd.

After that the reboot gives me only a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I install and run boot-repair from a live-cd but the problem persists.

The output is the following:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/1419090/

Could somebody guide me on what is wrong?

[oldfred]

@Pardieu
I do not really see anything wrong.
Some files do not like spaces, or even blanks at the end of a line. I might try removing the blank line in fstab, but that may not be the issue.
What video do you have and would video drivers have been updated?

[Ahwoh4zu]

My boot got screwed up when I allowed disk utility on the Mac side to make partition changes.I ran the tool and now my system boots successfully into OSX and Ubuntu (which is all I have).

However, I now have two extra items in my rEFInd menu (allegedly Windows). I also have two extra items in my Grub menu (MacOS UEFI Firmware.scap). Looking in my directory structure, I can see there is a lot of redundancy under /boot. Grub makes me nervous so I really want to make sure everything is actually running perfectly.

I was hoping somebody could take a look at my config (http://paste.ubuntu.com/1421707/) and advise me on the best course of action.

Thanks.

[bpb_21]

Yannubuntu,
Great work with the 1 click recovery! I'm having an odd issue (odd to me, anyway).

I had Ubuntu 12.04 installed on my laptop. I set it up to dual boot with Backtrack 5 R3. That worked fine. I got to playing around with the newest experimental nVidia drivers and fouled up my system somehow. No problem; I just burned a copy of the x64 Ubuntu-secure DVD with your handy tool already installed in it. Then I ran that, automated, to recover the boot options.

It worked, except it only restored the boot for Ubuntu. But, looking at the disk, the installation of Backtrack was still there. So I re-run the Boot-Repair tool and tell it to boot the /dev/sda3 Linux OS by default (which is Backtrack 5 R3) in the GUI. That seems to work but when I reboot, the only option I see in the GRUB boot menu is now the Backtrack installation; no Ubuntu 12.04.

Basically, whichever OS (Ubuntu 12.04 or BT 5 R3) I select as the default OS ends up being the only one available and showing up on the GRUB menu when I boot up. If I run Boot-Repair in Backtrack 5, then BT 5 is the only choice. If I run it in Ubuntu 12.04, that becomes the only choice.

Oh, and there is also a message in the Ubuntu Pastebin: "Linux not detected by os-prober on sda3. Please report this message to yannubuntu@gmail.com" on line 491. It says to email this to you, or I suppose I could just post it here. http://paste.ubuntu.com/1422439/

Anyway, hope you can help. It sure is weird, how Boot-Repair can detect whichever OS is running, but not which OS isn't, although they both show up in the Boot-Repair GUI as options for the default OS.

[oldfred]

We have too many in one thread with boot issues but everyone is different. Much better to have your own thread.

@Shoushouwhatwhat
Does Windows boot from UEFI menu directly?
@Pardieu
You are showing Flexnet. Grub 2 has a work around for Flexnet, so I thought it would work. Do you have some proprietary Windows software with a license? May be something else.
@wemarsh
Probably better in the Apple sub-forum. We know less about Macs unless trogdor1138 happens back to this thread.
@bpb_21
You are showing this:

ERROR: sil: only 1/4 metadata areas found on /dev/sda, picking...

Did you have RAID on this drive? Ubuntu did not used to install at all to drives with left over meta-data.

Presence1960 on remove old raid setting from HD
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1325650
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sda
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sdb
Also check BIOS for raid settings
More discusion:
http://wwww.ubuntuforums.org/showthr...38#post9274738

[Ahwoh4zu]

We have too many in one thread with boot issues but everyone is different. Much better to have your own thread.

@wemarsh
Probably better in the Apple sub-forum. We know less about Macs unless trogdor1138 happens back to this thread.

I tend to agree re the too many in one thread. Though, note that I posted here because the boot-repair instructions say to post problems to this thread. I thought it was a bad idea too.

I can try posting over in the Apple sub-forum, though I don't expect this to be an Apple-specific problem in any sense. I only mentioned disk utility because it's what corrupted things in the first place. At this point my problem lies in the fact that there is a bunch of redundant directory structure over on the Ubuntu side.