Have I screwed my MBR?

[lewisskinner]

Hi all.

I have been running Vista and Ubuntu dual-boot since Feisty, and wanted to try some of the Ubuntu variants out there. I'd had play with Mint and gOS, but then heard about Ubuntu Ultimate Edition (I think an ISO torrent download on demonoid) and figured I'd give it a go.

Anyway, I installed it on a separate partition to my Hardy and Vista installations (I have a fairly complicated partition table to allow me to run Vista and hardy whilst playing with other distros) but Ultimate wiped my Hardy settings, namely my evolution email settings/folders, losing me over 2,000 emails. That said, following a little play around, I decided I liked UE, and went for it, but then got a "grub error 15".

So, I booted into a live CD, and checked the partition where I'd installed UE, and within /boot, there's no /grub folder

Thinking that maybe a fresh install would fix it, I tried again, but have the same problem. Also, it appears that installation doesn't finish properly - I don't get the message "reboot or continue using liveCD?" This is obviously the problem (not installing grub) but why?

I have and AMD Athlon 64-bit 2.61GHz dual core processor, 2GB RAM and nVideo GeForce 8600 GPU and 500GB HD

Harddrive partitioned:
30GB NTFS *******
230GB NTFS shared
147GB ext3 /home
10GB ext3 / Formerly Ubuntu Hardy (my main OS)
10GB ext3 blank, for testing OS
15GB ext3 blank, for testing OS (where I installed UE)
3GB SWAP

[robertc36]

I think you might want to take a look at this http://www.supergrubdisk.org/

[lewisskinner]

^^I've tried that, but as I need to run Ubuntu from a live CD, I cannot burn the CD image, and the USB pen method doesn't seem to be working.

[lewisskinner]

Can anyone else help me?
I've also tried using this method (http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu-livecd/), but all I get when running
sudo apt-get install ms-sys is
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package ms-sys

[lewisskinner]

Here's what I get when I try to install:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/darkeyes_lewj/Screenshot-1-1.png

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/darkeyes_lewj/Screenshot-2-1.png

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/darkeyes_lewj/Screenshot-3-1.png

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y122/darkeyes_lewj/Screenshot-4.png

and then it just stops and returns to the live desktop

[lewisskinner]

It certainly can't hurt to check your partition table with testdisk to make sure everything is OK. If you want help with it, then follow the directions you quoted and post the output, and also post:

sudo fdisk -l

output of sudo fdisk -l:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 6526 52420063+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 36552 60801 194788125 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 6527 36551 241175812+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 59105 60409 10482381 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 60410 60801 3148708+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 36552 55840 154938829+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 55841 57145 10482381 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 57146 59104 15735636 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdf: 507 MB, 507322880 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 983 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x1dbf7fae

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 983 495313+ 6 FAT16

[lewisskinner]

Just booted into GParted, and noticed that whilst my Windows drive is 30GB, it's being reported as 50GB, and has a load of errors. I took screenshots, but have no idea where Gparted put them!

[volkswagner]

One word for you. Testdisk.

It save my world.
You can install it via the live CD.

Check out my thread.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=724156

[lewisskinner]

I've tried that, and testdisk seems to be reporting my partition table correctly, but GParted is not!

Even if I do sort that out, testdisk will not restore my MBR on the Windows Partition will it?

I've lowered my expectations since the initial ****-up, and am now essentially hoping I can get the partition table correct and then reinstall Windows Vista, and then reinstall Ubuntu.

Is there nowhere I can download a MBR or a linux /boot folder containing menu.lst and work from there? MY OS's are still there!

[meierfra.]

ms-sys is not in the Hardy repositories. But you can download the debian package from here (http://packages.debian.org/etch/ms-sys)

[meierfra.]

but Ultimate wiped my Hardy settings,

Did you share your /home partition among different distro's? You can do that, but you need use different user names for different distro's.



I've tried that, and testdisk seems to be reporting my partition table correctly,

I still recommend to use testdisk to rewrite your partition table. Use "search" for a deeper search for partitions. Before you "write" the partition table make sure that all partitions which are going to be written to the partition table are in green. Also select each of the partitions and press "p" and see whether testdisk can detect the files.



testdisk will not restore my MBR on the Windows Partition will it?

Rewriting the partition table will not restore the MBR. (Testdisk also has the ability to write a new boot code to the MBR, but I would not recommend that, since it does not work well with Vista).


Can you mount your Vista and Hardy partitions in the LiveCD?

Was Hardy still working before your latest attempt to install Ubuntu Ultimate? If yes, you could try to restore Hardy's Grub via


sudo grub
and at the grub prompt:

root (hd0,4)
setup (hd0)
(I'm assuming that Hardy is on /dev/sda5. If it is on /dev/sda8 use "root (hd0,7)) (You can use "find /boot/grub/stage1" at the grub prompt to figure out which partition contains the "stage1" file)

If that does not work, post the menu.lst from the Hardy partition.



reinstall Windows Vista, and then reinstall Ubuntu.

Currently I don't see a reason why you would have to reinstall Vista. Since the Ultimate installation did not finish, I agree with you, that it needs to be reinstalled.

[lewisskinner]

thanks meierfra.

I did indeed share /home partition, but I renamed /home/lewis as /home/lewis_old before installing UE, so I could migrate my setting in later. Incidentally, if I had Ubuntu Hardy, and wanted to change to UE 1.9, could I simply install over the top, using the exact same /home folder and login (at /home/lewis) and keep my Hardy settings on UE? I only ask since as I know my hardy CD works, I'll install that first, and then add UE on top.

the grub installation you describe follows (red is my inputs):

grub> root (hd0,4)
root (hd0,4)
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

Error 15: File not found
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
find /boot/grub/stage1

Error 15: File not found

[lewisskinner]

OK, here's what I get in testdisk:

Disk /dev/sda - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60801 255 63
Partition Start End Size in sectors
D HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 3915 254 63 62910477 [Windows OS]
D HPFS - NTFS 0 1 13 3915 254 63 62910465
D HPFS - NTFS 2610 1 13 6525 254 63 62910465
D HPFS - NTFS 3915 254 51 7831 254 63 62910553
D HPFS - NTFS 3915 254 63 7831 254 63 62910541
D HPFS - NTFS 3916 0 1 33940 254 63 482351625
D Linux 3916 0 1 36550 254 63 524281275
D HPFS - NTFS 3916 0 9 33940 254 63 482351617
D HPFS - NTFS 6526 0 1 36550 254 63 482351625 [Media&Games]
D Linux 33941 1 1 55839 254 63 351807372 [Shared Data]
D Linux 50358 1 1 51662 254 63 20964762
L Linux 55840 1 1 57144 254 63 20964762
D Linux 57145 1 1 59103 254 63 31471272

I've no idea what that means, but it's total crap!

I should have 2x NTFS, (30GB Vista and 140GB-odd shared), 4x ext3 (15GB, 10 GB, 10GB, 240GB-odd) and a 3GB swap.

What are all those extra NTFS partitions? Is it recovery?

EDIT: This is how it should look, and what shows up prior to using the "search deeper option

Disk /dev/sda - 500 GB / 465 GiB - CHS 60801 255 63
Current partition structure:
Partition Start End Size in sectors

1 * HPFS - NTFS 0 1 1 3915 254 63 62910477 [Windows OS]
2 P HPFS - NTFS 3916 0 1 33940 254 63 482351625
3 E extended LBA 33941 0 1 60408 254 63 425208420
4 P Linux Swap 60409 0 1 60800 254 63 6297480
5 L Linux 33941 1 1 55839 254 63 351807372 [Shared Data]
X extended 55840 0 1 57144 254 63 20964825
6 L Linux 55840 1 1 57144 254 63 20964762
X extended 57145 0 1 59103 254 63 31471335
7 L Linux 57145 1 1 59103 254 63 31471272
X extended 59104 0 1 60408 254 63 20964825
8 L Linux 59104 1 1 60408 254 63 20964762

[meierfra.]

What are all those extra NTFS partitions? Is it recovery?

Whose must be former NTFS partition, which you deleted.

Did you posted the whole output of the "deeper search"? Or did you miss a line? Your sda5 partition:

/dev/sda5 59105 60409 10482381 83 Linux
seems to be missing.


Are you able to mount sda5 with the live CD and look at the contents of your boot folder?:



sudo mkdir /mnt/sda5
sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5
ls -R /mnt/sda5/boot


You might also try to mount your other partitions. In particular, see whether you can access your vista partition and your home partition.


Any success restoring the MBR with the debian ms-sys package?