11.10 installation unrecognized partitions

[mjzanga]

I have a dell laptop (running win7) that came with 3 partitions, first an OEM partition, second a recovery partition, and third the C drive. I removed the OEM and recovery partitions since they were of no use to me, leaving the 15GB or so at the front of the disk unallocated. No matter what I do no partitions are detected by the installer, and neither is my windows installation. I also noticed that if I run fdisk -l in the command line it returns a string of errors for that particular disk. Using dmraid also returned errors, and I have run chkdsk in windows which didn't fix the problem.

[darkod]

Can you copy the fdisk results here?

And also if you can run the bootinfoscript in the link in my signature and post the results as explained there.

Post both, the fdisk and the script.

[mjzanga]

Well I don't think I'll be able to run the bootinfoscript seeing as the live boot gets no further than loading the mouse cursor and the desktop background. Though I did notice these errors that appeared on the terminal:

ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
ata1.00: failed command: IDENTIFY DEVICE
ata1.00: cmd ec/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00:00/40 tag 0 pio 521 in
res 40/00:01:00:00:00/00:00:00:00:00/40 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata1.00: status: {DRDY}
ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata2.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen
ata2.00: cmd a0/00:00:00:08:00/00:00:00:00:00:00/a0 tag 0 pio 16392 in
res 40/00:02:00:00:02/00:00:00:00:00/00 Emask 0x4 (timeout)
ata2.00: status: {DRDY}
ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata1.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)
ata2.00: revalidation failed (errno=-5)If I'm not mistaken, is that something to the effect of it trying to access those 2 partitions but encountering errors? Also here is fdisk -l /dev/sda results:

end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 1
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 1250263720
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 156282965
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 1250263720
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 156282965
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 3
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 2

[darkod]

So you can't even load live mode?

Any chance of the cd being bad, or the iso corrupted during download? Try burning a new cd at no more than 8x, and also downloading another image. It's best by torrent because it checks for corruption during download.

Loading the cd has nothing to do with the hdd, so lets sort that out first. If the cd is bad the install process might fail because of it.

[mjzanga]

I have been using a usb to boot (since I have no CD's with me at the moment and have yet to get around to buying some), and have tried two different programs to make the bootable drive. I'll redownload the iso and let you know if anything changes.

[mjzanga]

Alright the redownloaded iso had all the same previous errors, nothing changed. I can try with a CD instead?

[darkod]

No, usb stick is fine. But I have no idea what is going on unfortunately. Loading live mode doesn't even use the hdd, it loads in memory and works from the usb/cd.
So at least loading live mode should work even if you have a dead hdd completely.

Maybe someone else can jump in, I don't have more ideas. Plus is getting really late in my time zone. :)

[mjzanga]

haha well thanks for your help anyways!

[Hakunka-Matata]

What programs did you use to create the liveCD/USB stick?

boot_info_script is a very useful tool that might tell us a lot about why your computer is acting the way it is.

Here's a little trash script to do 95% of the work for you on boot_info_script


sudo bash makeresults.sh

[mjzanga]

What programs did you use to create the liveCD/USB stick?
I tried both unetbootin and the usb installer program at pendrivelinux.com. Mucked around with the terminal for a bit and got the bootinfoscript to run, attached the error-filled results file <.<

[darkod]

Something is weird with your hdd, and that's why there are no partitions reported. Look at what the script reports:
Drive: sda __________________________________________________ ___________________

Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System

Invalid MBR Signature found.

But it seems win7 is working fine which means it is ignoring this error.

testdisk might be able to repair this, but make sure you have a backup of your data before playing with it.

[mjzanga]

Something is weird with your hdd, and that's why there are no partitions reported. Look at what the script reports:
Drive: sda __________________________________________________ ___________________

Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System

Invalid MBR Signature found.

But it seems win7 is working fine which means it is ignoring this error.

testdisk might be able to repair this, but make sure you have a backup of your data before playing with it.
yes I saw that, tried fixing the mbr in windows but it didn't change anything. I'll try testdisk once I get the chance and let you know what happens.

[mjzanga]

well testdisk didn't help much...I've tried repairing the mbr, but everything I do on ubuntu to try and see the partitions is returning errors

[larrypg]

Hello,

Not sure this will help much but I have a Dell pc and the partition with Win 7 on it was not the bootable partition but one of the ones you erased.

[mjzanga]

Hello,

Not sure this will help much but I have a Dell pc and the partition with Win 7 on it was not the bootable partition but one of the ones you erased.
I did some research on that subject before removing those partitions, and apparently they're just for the dell recovery utility and hardware diagnostics. Windows boots just fine every time and recognizes the partitions.

[Hakunka-Matata]

We're not making much progress resolving your issue. Boot_info_script RESULTS.txt shows you have no bootloader installed in the MBR of sda.
Please post the configuration of your HD partitioning scheme? Maybe a picture of windows DISK MANAGER layout?

Please clarify: you cannot get Ubuntu liveCD/USB to boot on your computer?
If/when you get the machine to boot to Ubuntu, please post the output of these commands:

sudo fdisk -l
sudo sfdisk -luS

[mjzanga]

We're not making much progress resolving your issue. Boot_info_script RESULTS.txt shows you have no bootloader installed in the MBR of sda.
Please post the configuration of your HD partitioning scheme? Maybe a picture of windows DISK MANAGER layout?

Please clarify: you cannot get Ubuntu liveCD/USB to boot on your computer?
If/when you get the machine to boot to Ubuntu, please post the output of these commands:

sudo fdisk -l
sudo sfdisk -luS
The output of sudo fdisk -l was posted earlier:

end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 1
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 1250263720
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 156282965
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 1250263720
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 156282965
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 2
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 3
end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 1
Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 2 sfdisk -luS outputs almost the same exact thing, but also said "/dev/sda: unrecognized partition table type. No partitions found" So basically nothing different there...I attached a screenshot of my windows desktop with the disk manager and the properties window for the disk up. As for live booting Ubuntu, its as if the Ubuntu desktop never finishes loading up. Just stops at the default background image and the mouse cursor. I've been accessing the terminal using Ctrl+Alt+F1.

[Hakunka-Matata]

Sorry about asking for data that already was posted.

[mjzanga]

Sorry about asking for data that already was posted.
No problem. Would have had to post the sfdisk output anyways, and its near identical

[darkod]

Well, after trying most options, I think you need to consider drastic measures.

1. Do you have any data in your ubuntu that you need to copy? If yes, it doesn't seem possible to access it. If no, no problem there if ubuntu is deleted.
2. Boot win7 because it still boots fine, and open the Backup & Recovery tool. Make the rescue disc which can boot the computer and restore a backup. After making that disc, make a full backup of your win7 partition on external HDD. Note down the size of your windows partition(s).

When that is done:
3. Boot ubuntu live mode, open Gparted, select the HDD and go in Device - Create Partition table. By default it offers to create a new blank partition table of msdos type. Select that. NOTE: THIS WILL DELETE ALL PARTITIONS ON THE HDD!!!
4. After the new partition table has been written, still in Gparted create one (or more depending how much you have now) ntfs partitions for windows, with the same size(s) as you noted them down earlier.
5. Then boot the computer with the windows rescue disc and restore the backup of your windows.
6. Boot few times to make sure win7 is booting fine.
7. Proceed installing ubuntu into the unallocated space left on the HDD using manual partitioning (or some of the auto options if it can use the unallocated free space).

That should be it. Unfortunately I don't see another way to overcome this partition table problem.

[mjzanga]

Is there a way to run gParted from the command line?

[Hakunka-Matata]

sudo gparted

gparted uses a gui, so if the x server is having problems, or there is no desktop graphic manager installed, then gparted won't do you much good. Try other command line partition editors, like parted.

[mjzanga]

Yeah, didn't think gparted was going to work...I'll give parted a shot though, since I'll be home this weekend and can get some blank CDs to make a rescue disk for windows. Hopefully that will all work out, I'll post the results when I'm done

[darkod]

I haven't used much CLI partition managers but you can also try sfdisk I think. It has better interface than parted. You need to use sudo of course, like:

sudo sfdisk /dev/sda

And none of the partition on the disk you want to work with should be mounted. sfdisk will run only if nothing is mounted from that disk.

[mjzanga]

Well it isn't letting me create a restore disk in windows, keeps coming up with an error. I think this has something to do with the partitions I deleted early on...and I don't have the install disks here with me. Any other ideas for creating restore disks or other things I could try?