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

[aidu]

Hello everyone!
I've been trying to install BackTrack 5 R3 from LiveCD on my Samsung M3 Portable external hard drive. I've unsuccessfully tried to repair my Grub using the Boot-Repair tool after getting the "Unknown filesystem, Grub Rescue" message. I've also got Windows 7 x64 installed on my internal hard drive.
I would be grateful if somebody could help me fix this problem.
Here's also the link to the log generated after using the Boot-Repair: http://paste.ubuntu.com/5659210/

[oldfred]

I do not know grub customizer. I do not see the size you say.

Part of your issue is you are trying to load a jpg from a path that does not yet exist. When grub loads, Ubuntu has not yet set up paths, so /home does not yet exist. It has to process fstab first.

You have this in you grub but /home/alexandros does not exist. I think they say to put pictures into /boot/grub as that is where grub is loading from? I never have used any backgrounds. I just want grub to run as fast as possible to minimize boot time.

/home/alexandros/Pictures/the-milky-way-galaxy-1024-768-6808.jpg

[grparisgr]

ok i got that you are saying..but how i will say to grub to NOT load the photo and continue without it ?

[oldfred]

@grparisgr
Not sure the easiest way. You might be able to use Boot-Repair and just to the uninstall & reinstall of grub.
You may be able to use the live install to edit grub.cfg (the file we are never to edit), just to get it to boot once.
Do you get any grub menu or is black screen before that?


@aidu
You have a 1TB or very large external drive. There used to be a bug with grub on very large root partitions or files located beyond a certain point on drive. The supposedly fixed it, but with some BIOS and/or external drives we still seem to see issues. My suggestion usually is a small / (root) partition of 25GB within first 100GB of drive. Yann normally just suggests a even smaller /boot partition which in your case may be easier to squeeze in. If you move NTFS partition to make room for /boot, you need to run chkdsk on it afterwards from Windows or a Windows repairCD.

[vigor1977]

Hello

First time in ubuntuforums!

Before a couple of days i decided to format partition where win xp installed and free space in my drive. Before formatting win xp partition i had triple boot system( ubuntu 12.04, windows xp and windows vista). I upgraded windows vista to win 7. I was able then to boot only in windows 7 because grub menu disappeared. I tried to format drive with windows xp from device manager of windows 7 but without success because system warned me that is a windows system partition. I boot my computer from hirens cd and did succesfully the format of the windows xp partition.
My problems started after the next boot. I was not able to boot in Ubuntu or Windows 7. I boot again my laptop using hiren's cd and changed letter "D:" of the windows 7 partition to "C:". No boot again
I found the solution of the boot-repair from this forum and after the recommended repair method i can boot ONLY in Ubuntu 12.04. Grub menu has not a windows 7 choice!
I tried to recover win 7 partition booting from windows 7 installation usb using windows 7 recovery environment and bootrec.exe commands, but without success.
I noticed that when i select repair method there is no windows installation to select on the popup window !

My hard drive is in a good condition.

Is there a solution to my problem, eg. by editing ubuntu boot files?

Below is my boot-info
http://paste.ubuntu.com/5660917/

Thanks in advance!

[aidu]

Thank you for your help oldfred. I've done it as you said and now everything works perfectly.

[oldfred]

@aidu - Glad you got it fixed.

@vigor1977
You have to understand that Windows only boots from one partition, not matter how many installs you have. In fact second installs move their boot files into the first install ( called active partition or boot flag). When second install is newer it takes over old install and uses its boot loader but from old install.

Or all your boot files for Windows 7 were in the XP partition. And Windows will only boot from a primary partition. So it cannot directly boot from your Windows 7 install. You can recreate a small NTFS boot partition (must be primary) with boot flag and install Windows 7 boot files to that partition or reinstall Windows to a primary partition.

Grub does not use boot flag, so it only should be on the primary NTFS partition. Ubuntu can boot from logical partitions, but you used two primary partitions for Ubuntu & swap.

Better explanation, even just reviewing pictures.
Multibooters, Pictures here worth 1000+ words
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/multiboot.html

[vigor1977]

oldfred,
Thank you for your quick, detailed and explanatory answer

How can i install Windows 7 boot files to the primary partition to avoid reinstall Windows?
Do you know a link with a guide that will help me?
I am thinking to make sda5 as primary partition.
The next step is to use gparted to mark a boot flag on the sda5?
Thank you for wasting your time to help us

[oldfred]

@vigor1977
You cannot make sda5 a primary. Primary partitions by definition are sda1 thru sda4. You can only have 4 primary or 3 primary and one extended as the extended is really a primary. Within extended you can have unlimited number of logical partitions. All logical partitions must be in extended and you only can have one extended.

You might try this tool to see if you can reorganize to make your NTFS partitions primary. But be sure to have good backups.
To convert a partition from primary to logical, at least one free (unallocated) sector must exist between the partition and the one that precedes it.
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

[mahnac72]

Boot-Repair tool installed with Ubuntu 12.10 to repair MBR for dual boot system. What a relief, for a newbie I thought this would be a mission. I had a working installation with Dual boot options for Windows 7 and Ubuntu.

Then I decided to try and recover the Windows 7 installation, just for fun....
From the dual boot option, selected Windows recovery.
The windows recovery ran fine, but after installing I ened up with a flashing cursor "_"
I think I broke the MBR trying to install the fresh copy of Windows via the recovery partition.

Read that a Windows installation will write it's own MBR messing up the dual boot installation...

So I'm still reading about MBR to better understand what happened and how to successfully recover a Windows 7 partition from the recovery partion.

Anybody able to direct me to being able to recover Windows 7 from the recovery partition from a Dual Boot installation from a Live Ubuntu DVD will be appreciated.