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

[oldfred]

@Zorrothustra
I think lock issue is because you have the extra system partitions. Boot-Repair can handle a separate /boot partition but is not set up to handle anything more like your /var & /tmp.
You would have to manually chroot and be sure to also mount them, which all the typical chroot instructions do not include, but you must.

Most users just install / (root) to SSD and then /home to rotating drive. I have two / installs on my 64GB SSD, but have all data in data partitions on my rotating drive.

You could try Supergrub just to see if you can boot. That would save the chroot.

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Main_Page

Splitting home directory discussion and details:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1811198
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1901437
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...hlight=%2Fdata

[kareem6]

I installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS along side with Windows 7. I then, for some dumb reason, deleted the partition I installed Ubuntu on. I had Windows boot issues. I reinstalled Ubuntu and it works perfectly. However, I'm not able to see Windows 7 option on the grub menu.
I followed some steps online to fix Windows boot using Windows 7 installation USB flash drive. From the command prompt I ran:
bootrec.exe /fixboot
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
and these were successful. However, when I ran:
bootrec.exe /rebuildbcd
It did some work and found the Windows 7 installation, but I got the message at the end:

The requested system device cannot be found

I ended up getting my Ubuntu bootloader broken after this, but I fixed it using Boot-Repair.
Apparently, the message is because I'm using a Windows 7 installation USB flash drive. I can't actually use a DVD because my Optical DVD Drive is broken.
So is there any way to get things work properly using a USB flash drive?

here's my boot info
Thank you!

[oldfred]

Boot-Repair is not showing any Windows boot files in sda1 which is flagged as the boot partition or in Windows the active partition. So os-prober would not find any bootable Windows.

You are missing bootmgr & BCD and whatever else Windows may have in its boot partition. Boot-Repair cannot fix those issues, but your Windows repair console should?

Vista/7/8 (with 7or 8 the first two files are usually in a separate 100MB boot partition)
/bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe

I think some have just copied bootmgr and /Boot/BCD from a repair installer and then since BCD is not correct run the repairs to add the correct entry for their install.

Win7 forum
http://www.sevenforums.com/

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...32#post5726832

[Zorrothustra]

Big thanks to Oldfred !

I've got it working thanks to your suggestion on SuperGrub, though probably not the way you intended...

Actually couldn't get the USB drive with Supergrub booted on my new machine. Tested it on another machine where it worked fine. Also the Ubuntu-live USB worked fine on the new machine so it wasn't a boot order issue. Couldn't understand, finally tried the magic key: F12. Guess what showed up there: no USB drive but among others there was ubuntu, selected it, Grub loaded and ubuntu starts fine. Should have tried that before...

Anyway I did try the boot-repair again which worked from the installed ubuntu. Followed the programs instructions as recommended through the Terminal but it told me an error occured during repair. The output of the file was: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7475276/

Unless there would be a simple solution with minimal risk I think I'll leave it here, the only thing I need to keep in mind is to hit the F12 key at startup, I think I should be able to remember that...

Thanks again Oldfred for your recommendations that helped me out.

BTW: I choose for /tmp and /var partitions on the HDD following several recommendations on the forums on installing with both SDD and HDD. Idea was to try to keep the SSD optimal for as long as possible.

[john-paul51]

Hi everyone,

my mother's PC did not boot and showed the famous GRUB rescue message.
It's a common dual boot with W7 (sda2) and ubuntu (extended partition sda3) + 2 partitions for data (1 ntfs on sda5 and 1 ext3 in sda3 too).

I think something went wrong when she tried an upgrade. So there is no option "grub reinstall" in the boot-repair utility and "grub location" and "grub options" tabs are greyed out.

I tried a "recommended repair" with the boot-repair-disk liveCD, but it did not reinstall grub, I think it only reinstalled the MBR. Now it's trying to boot on windows and get a windows error (need to repair windows).

Here is the boot info I got when I boot on the liveCD again:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/7480218/

What would you recommend?

I am not sure if the extended partition sda3 still contains the ubuntu partition and the other data partition, I need to check that with gparted, but I cannot access the computer easily since we are in different countries...
I think I have first to fix the ubuntu system files, as suggested here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/20718...th-boot-repair

Then I would purge and reinstall grub on sda, through the advanced options?
If I reinstall ubuntu on its partition, it would reinstall grub as well, right?

Thanks for any advice.
JP

[oldfred]

@john-paul51
You show drive full partitioned with fat32 & NTFS partition.
The Windows boot files are in sda1, which now shows as FAT32, but I thought Windows 7 only booted from NTFS?
And your main Windows in sda2 does not the the BCD which is in the sda1 partition. And Windows boots from partition with boot flag which is on sda2.

Windows BIOS Boot files:
Vista/7/8 (with 7or 8 the first two files are usually in a separate 100MB NTFS boot partition)
/bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe

So I do not know if sda1 was changed from NTFS to FAT32 and boot flag moved or how sda1 has boot files, but sda2 has boot flag??

You show no evidence of a Linux partition, so there is no grub to install. Your sda3 is the extended partition and it is fully used by sda5 a NTFS partition. So there is no unallocated space where a Linux partition may have been. So either partitions did not exist or other major changes have been made to system.

[john-paul51]

Thank you oldfred for your reply,

I have no idea why there is this FAT32 partition.
And you're right, at first I thought sda5 and sda3 were separated but it seems that she tried to repair windows and it erased the ubuntu partition at some point... then the ntfs data partition (sda5) was resized to fill sda3.
I will try to access sda5 with a liveCD to check if I can recover some of her data... then I think I will just have to reinstall everything.

Thank you for your help!

[maglax]

I know this is not a computer running ubuntu, but i ran the boot-repair through a Live disk hoping to fix my grub "attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'" error. Sadly this tool did not fix the problem. The log file is located here: http://paste2.org/9GLAAanB

I would appreciate any help. Thanks in advance!!!

[oldfred]

I see an error on the CD/DVD which is common but does not matter.

But hard drive looks ok to me? Often an outside of disk error is where extended partition end is beyond end of disk.

Some with very large root has BIOS issues. While the orginal issue was an old BIOS issue with drives over 137GB, we have seen similar issues with newer BIOS systems, but more often on external USB hard drives.
Does BIOS have drive set as AHCI not IDE nor RAID. If no AHCI then Large or LBA.

Then the solution is to have /boot or a smaller / (root) fully inside the first 100GB of a drive and rest of drive as /home or data partition(s).

You do show an old /boot, but looks like you reconfigured to not use it? But grub menu in sda3 still shows that UUID as the boot UUID. As long as grub is booting from sda1 it should be ok.

[Veneno]

Hi

I used boot repair, but sadly it didn't fix my boot problem. Could you help me out? This is my paste: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7506042

I can log fine into Ubuntu, but when I choose Windows Boot Manager it doesn't do a thing... I installed Lubuntu over Ubuntu, and when I had Ubuntu it worked just fine. I'd like it to go back to those good days