moving grub2 mbr because of truecrypt, please help

[dex87]

After having encrypted my windows partition, truecrypt overwrote my mbr, and now I can't access grub during boot, not even when I press escape :(

I was thinking of restoring my original mbr with the truecrypt rescue cd, boot into ubuntu and copy the mbr to the ubuntu partition, but I'm really not sure how to do it. I'm still learning and any help would be greatly appreciated. When you do this, truecrypt supposedly loads grub when you press escape.

To give you an idea of how my drive is partitioned, pls see the attachment.

Thanks in advance!

[roomey]

After having encrypted my windows partition, truecrypt overwrote my mbr, and now I can't access grub during boot, not even when I press escape :(


this worked for me (until a GRUB update overwrote the MBR without confirmation)

Leave the truecrypt boot loader on the MBR.


Boot using ubuntu live disk
Check which is the main ubuntu partition using: sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda(or gparted)
You need to install grub on a logical partition.
If the Main Ubuntu partition is extended and not logical, grub will not boot up properly, so you have to use a logical partition

install gparted to help you with this:sudo aptitude install gparted
Some dell laptops seem to have takend the first partition as a small utilities area: give it the boot flag (truecrypt likes grub having a boot flag.)


Mount the main linux partition: sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt
Install grub2 on the partition (either the main one or the one you just took)
: sudo grub-install --force --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdaX (in my case it was sda1).
Restart your computer. In my case I can press escape when it asks for my passphrase, and then I get GRUB menu, or I can put in my passphrase, and then I still get the grub menu (which is strange) but when I pick windows it boots fine)

BE CAREFUL with this, use at your own risk, installing GRUB on a partition not a disk is not recommended. But as I said, this worked well for me.

PLEASE NOTE ON THE INSTRUCTIONS ABOVE.

After you move GRUB to a new partition, run

dpkg-reconfigure grub-pcThis SHOULD stop your MBR being lost during a future update.

Even so, once you have it all set up take a copy of the MBR so you can restore easily
Use (Be carful of using dd)

dd if=/dev/sda of=/boot/mbr.bak bs=512 count=1

NB. if you do install GRUB2 on an extended partition, it will boot once, but will fail after.
NNB. Don't do this without backing up
NNNB. If you dont put in the password, and then boot windows, you end up in the recovery program. I am no expert on windows, but I am guessing if you try to recover, you will kill your encrypted win partition.

[Turpin]

oops, failed to read original post. Edited.