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View Full Version : [ubuntu] grub rescue on a dual boot system



seth elohim
March 24th, 2010, 11:47 PM
So here is my problem. A good friend of mine wanted me to install Ubuntu on their computer to surf the web without fear of viruses/malware/ect. they had windows7 installed to run certain apps they couldnt live without. I used a 9.10 cd that I have used several times for various installs and everything seemed to go well. However when I went to reboot I got a grub rescue prompt and nothing else. I searched the forum and found "How to restore the Ubuntu/XP/Vista/7 bootloader (Updated for Ubuntu 9.10)" I then followed the instructions to the letter but when I rebooted it went back to grub rescue. I can use the terminal and paste any output here if you gurus can walk me through the rescue. As a side note, her copy of windows seven has a loader of its own, and I am not sure if that has anything to do with it, but I really hope that i dont wind up screwing her computer up and souring her on Linux after all the great stuff I have told her about it.

666f6f
March 25th, 2010, 01:04 AM
Probably for some reason a messed up /boot/grub/grub.cfg was generated. It happened to me many times when I had Ubuntu installed on a USB External Disk (which, by the way, is not a good idea because of crappy USB controllers or faulty USB cables, at least to my mind).

Can you boot the Karmic LiveCD, run sudo fdisk -l and then paste the output here?

seth elohim
March 25th, 2010, 01:49 AM
Sorry, I already went atomic and reloaded windows7 from boot disc. I think her problem involved it being a patched copy of windows with a hacked loader. (not my work btw) I will tackle the problem with grub after I get her a legit copy of windows. Thank you for taking the time to respond none the less :) For the record, anyone using a hacked loader will probably run into similar problems with grub.

666f6f
March 25th, 2010, 01:53 AM
Quite gentle response, thanks for reporting back!

Jeff May
March 25th, 2010, 04:00 AM
Very glad you solved the issue. I do want to provide an "enhanced" response for the sake of those who may find this thread via a search. Currently upgrading a Karmic 9.10 dual-boot system to Lucid 10.04 beta seems to be problematic in some instances, and causes Grub2 to be written to the Windows partition. As a result trying to select your Windows partition from the Grub2 menu just brings you back to the Grub2 menu.

Here's the fix . . . and it pretty much applies to a number of similar situations when after installing Ubuntu you can no longer access your Windows 7 (or Vista) partition because the Windows bootloader was overwritten . . .

1. Restore the Windows 7 bootloader.

- Boot the machine from the Windows 7 CD
- Select "Repair Windows"
- After the installer finishes searching for Windows systems, select the installation you wish to restore.
- Select the "Boot to command prompt" option.
- At the command prompt, issue the following commands

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot

- After issuing each command you should receive "The command was completed successfully"

When you restart your computer you should boot directly into your Windows 7 installation.

2. Restore the Grub loader and Dual-Boot Functionality
- Boot the machine from Ubuntu Live CD
- Open a terminal session
- Create a mount point for your Ubuntu partition
(example: if your Ubuntu installation is in sda5 . . . )

sudo mkdir /media/sda5

- Mount your Ubuntu partition to the mount point

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /media/sda5

- Finally, install Grub on your Ubuntu partition and point the boot loader to it.

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/sda5 /dev/sda


Reboot the machine, and you should be good to go.