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

[oldfred]

@marinecomm
You have a BIOS install that does not use an efi partition at all. If you have a newer system it may boot in either UEFI or BIOS mode. You should boot Boot-Repair in BIOS mode from UEFI menu with CSM/BIOS/Legacy on if that is a choice. Old systems only boot in BIOS mode.

If using liveCD and manually doing it, your install is in sda1.:

#Comments are anything after the #, enter commands in terminal session
#Install MBR from liveCD/DVD/USB, Ubuntu install on sda1 and want grub2's bootloader in drive sda's MBR:
#Find linux partition, change sda5 if not correct:
sudo fdisk -l
#confirm that linux is sda1
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
# The above command should work but they now suggest this command for grub 1.99 with Natty 11.04 or later - uses boot not root.:
sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda
#If that returns any errors run:
sudo grub-install --recheck --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda
# If no errors on previous commands reboot into working system and run this:
sudo update-grub

[marinecomm]

Ok, followed your directions to a "T" and it seems to have done the trick. Hopefully it won't happen again. My PC was made last year so I don't see why it couldn't boot up in UEFI mode. Do I need to enable that in BIOS or something?

[oldfred]

UEFI mode and BIOS mode use totally different partitioning and installs. Each also writes system info differently for operating system to use, so you cannot even dual boot one system in UEFI and anther in BIOS with out going into UEFI/BIOS and changing settings.

So to use UEFI, you would have to totally reformat hard drive and repartition to gpt and create a new efi partition at the beginning of the drive to boot in UEFI mode.

CSM/BIOS mode exists on the newer UEFI computers for compatibility with the older configuration of MBR(msdos) partitioning and booting with BIOS.

[EdMartin]

Don't know if I should start a new thread ... but here goes anyway.

I'm trying to set up a brand new Acer Aspire V3 772G-9460 with Windows 8 preinstalled on its SSD drive (it has a regular SATA data drive too) as a dual boot machine with Ubuntu 13.04. In BIOS you can set either UEFI or Legacy. UEFI automatically sets SecureBoot; you can't have one without the other. With Legacy, Windows 8 won't boot at all.

I reduced the primary partition on the data drive and then installed Ubuntu there in UEFI mode, allowing the installer to create a root partition and a swap partition.

Following installation, I rebooted and it would only boot into Windows. So I rebooted from the Ubuntu install disk, choosing "Try Ubuntu" this time. I then installed Boot-repair and ran it. It alerted me to EFI being present. I left the Advanced options at their default settings. It instructed me to turn off SecureBoot, but of course I couldn't do that there and then (and as noted above turning off SecureBoot can only be done by switching from UEFI to Legacy, and then Windows won't boot). It also warned me about "buggy-kernel" and asked if it should continue. So I answered Yes. It then reported that Boot-repair had completed successfully. The URL given was

http://paste.ubuntu.com/6018835/

Following a reboot, the system only booted to Windows -- no hint of Ubuntu at all.

I'd appreciate any suggestions for provoking a nice simple GRUB2 menu to appear giving me the choice of booting to Windows or to Ubuntu.

Thanks.

... Ed Martin

[oldfred]

Boot-Repair is showing that you have the Microsoft key signed version of the kernel & grub2's shim with the key. You should be able to boot Ubuntu in secure boot mode.

Boot-Repair dumps efi paramters and it shows this as a boot option:
Boot0006* ubuntu HD(2,c8800,32000,291c1a17-9b31-491e-b7f9-f3c843a322de)File(EFIubuntushimx64.efi)

UEFI systems with secure boot on will only show other secure boot systems to boot. But since Ubuntu is secure boot it should show it as it is in your UEFI.

If secure boot is off, you should be able to boot Windows. But some have a combined CSM/efi boot where they look for an efi partition and efi boot files and if not found then try to boot from MBR in CSM mode.

If from Ubuntu you get a black screen that may then be video issues. Then what video card/chip do you have?

[psfal]

@oldfred

Thanks, I appreciate it

[EdMartin]

@oldfred

But later in the Boot-repair report that Boot0006* entry is no longer present. Where did it disappear to?

... Ed Martin

[oldfred]

I am not sure why there are usually three lists. I assume one is secure boot and one is not. Maybe history or CSM is third? What is really important is what do you see from UEFI menu? And secure boot on or off will change that.

I have these links but have not dug into them. Somewhere all the details of UEFI and the parameters you can dump are documented.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UE...ing#UEFI_Shell
EFI/boot/bootx64.efi.efi" ---> Brings up 'EFI shell environment' with command prompt.
Launch EFI Shell from File System Device
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ace#UEFI_Shell
http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...and-scripting/

[gukenschlaven]

I apparently made some mistake updating GRUB on my laptop install. Now Ubuntu won't boot.

I am dual-booting with Windows 8 which works fine.

I have Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit installed.

My laptop is an ASUS X550CA.

I tried running [Boot-Repair] on the recommended settings and got an error message. The link given is: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6030006/

Thank you for any assistance.

[oldfred]

@gukenschlaven
Boot-Repair is reporting an error about grub install location not specified. Did you not tell it to install grub to efi partition or sda?
It looks like you originally installed Ubuntu in BIOS mode, but Boot-Repair has converted to UEFI mode.
You may want to house clean old kernels from your install.