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

[Ebaz313]

Hi,

I am a novice to the entire Ubuntu and Linux worlds.

I am a teacher, and in my classroom I have a bunch of old PC's made by Sony around the year 2000. Because our school has no money for new computers, I need to revive these old machines and get them working fast again (web-browsing, word-processing, etc).

The computer I'm working on previously had Windows XP home edition on it. I want to completely delete the old OS and start fresh with Lubuntu.

I'm attempting to put Lubuntu 12.10 on one of the computers. One I'm working on right now is a Pentium 4. The entire install process goes successfully, but when I attempt to boot without the live CD, the boot fails.

I get this error message before any OS boots:

"attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0' .
grub rescue>"

I tried the recommended settings on boot-repair, but the boot still fails and I get the same error message.

I made boot info URL. http://paste.ubuntu.com/1502160/

Can someone tell me some simple step-by-step directions on what I need to do in order to get this working?

Thank you so much!

[YannBuntu]

Welcome among us !

In line 422 of your log ( http://paste.ubuntu.com/1502160/ ), we see that your Ubuntu partition (sda1) is 160GB.
This may be an issue as some BIOS cannot boot on partitions ending too far (>100GB) from the start of the disc.

I recommend you use Gparted (from a liveCD) to reduce your sda1 partition to 50GB. (it must still start from the start of the disc).
In the 110GB free space it will create, you can create a data partition (EXT4 format, you can put some documents in it).

[boingo-bo]

Hi- (I posted this in the apple forum, but no response yet)

I have been working at repurposing a mid-2009 MacBook Pro (5,5) as dual-boot OS X and Ubuntu 12.04

I have gotten fairly far, but post-installation of Ubuntu, it is failing to boot ubuntu.. This was a machine with a failing HD, and I decided that while I was upgrading the drive, I would make it dual boot

What I have done so far:
1) Single boot install from live 12.04 CD of Ubuntu (worked fine, standard .iso) - I did this to test and make sure ubuntu would install and work ok.

2) erase and re-partition and reinstall of OS X Lion. (partitioned disk... I now have working OS X including the EFI partition, OS X main partition, Recovery partition) In Disk Utility I created additional partiton for linux. + one for shared files. - Created these as hfs+

3) Install Refit - Verify that I can boot into OS X fine.

4) Install ubuntu 12.04 --- This seemed to work fine, ( I erased one of the hfs+ partitions, and re-created an ext4 and a swap partition from the free space)
but I had a problem at the end of the install - It gave an error attempting to install grub into the ext4 partition I installed linux on. It have me additional chance to try to re-install grub, I tried to install onto the drive (sda) - I also tried creating a small additional boot partition by dividing up the swap into two partitions, and attempting to install grub onto this.

After this, I tried fixing things with boot-repair, and taking the defaults. at one point previously I also ran the refit partition sync. Now, whether I try booting directly via EFI (option key) or via Refit, the Ubuntu install shows up (as tux penguin under refit, or as "windows" under EFI/option key) - but in both cases I get a black screen with "missing operating system"

Here is my boot-repair pastebin link: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1503917/

I suppose I could just do a re-install of ubuntu, but i want to use this as a learninng experience about the wacky-world of dual boot mac intel.
Thanks!

[YannBuntu]

Thanks for your feedback. We have little information about MacOS/Ubuntu dualboots. The majority of the ones I saw were using Refit(or Refind) + GRUB2 in the PBR of Ubuntu.

1) By default, when detecting MacOS, Boot-Repair installs GRUB2 in the PBR of Ubuntu. So currently you have GRUB2 in the PBR of your Ubuntu, so Refit should be able to chainload to it. Please update Refit if possible, then reboot and tell us what you observe ?

2) I also saw one case of MacOS dualboot with standard GRUB2 install (either in the MBR or in the ESP, i don't remember). I would test this in a second step.
To install GRUB2 in your MBR: via Gparted, format your sda7 partition, and make it a BIOS-Boot partition (it must have UNFORMATED filesystem, and a 'BIOS-Boot' flag).
Then run Boot-Repair --> Advanced options --> "GRUB location" tab --> select "Place GRUB into: sda" --> untick "Separate /boot/efi" --> Apply. Indicate us the new URL that will appear, then reboot the pc, update Refit if possible, and tell what you observe.

3) If 1 and 2 don't work, try installing GRUB2 in the ESP: run Boot-Repair --> Advanced options --> "GRUB location" tab --> tick "Separate /boot/efi" --> Apply. Indicate us the new URL that will appear, then reboot the pc, update Refit if possible, and tell what you observe?

[bitp]

Hello! Following the guides, I created a thread for my issue and I'm posting a link to it here. I appreciate your time and help.

UEFI Secure Boot Windows 8 + Ubuntu boot issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2102337

[boingo-bo]

Thanks for your feedback. We have little information about MacOS/Ubuntu dualboots. The majority of the ones I saw were using Refit(or Refind) + GRUB2 in the PBR of Ubuntu.

1) By default, when detecting MacOS, Boot-Repair installs GRUB2 in the PBR of Ubuntu. So currently you have GRUB2 in the PBR of your Ubuntu, so Refit should be able to chainload to it. Please update Refit if possible, then reboot and tell us what you observe ?

2) I also saw one case of MacOS dualboot with standard GRUB2 install (either in the MBR or in the ESP, i don't remember). I would test this in a second step.
To install GRUB2 in your MBR: via Gparted, format your sda7 partition, and make it a BIOS-Boot partition (it must have UNFORMATED filesystem, and a 'BIOS-Boot' flag).
Then run Boot-Repair --> Advanced options --> "GRUB location" tab --> select "Place GRUB into: sda" --> untick "Separate /boot/efi" --> Apply. Indicate us the new URL that will appear, then reboot the pc, update Refit if possible, and tell what you observe.

3) If 1 and 2 don't work, try installing GRUB2 in the ESP: run Boot-Repair --> Advanced options --> "GRUB location" tab --> tick "Separate /boot/efi" --> Apply. Indicate us the new URL that will appear, then reboot the pc, update Refit if possible, and tell what you observe?

@ yanbutu - I previously edited the MBR (similar to this post http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=185 ) - and then attempted to reboot. I got a grub menu, but then it froze. I added only my sda2, sda6 and sda5 partitions to the MBR using gdisk (on osx)


When you say "update Refit" I wonder what you mean. Do you mean re-sync partition?
I think I might repartition things, so that the bootable partition falls within the first 4 partitions and then the hybrid MBR is happier?? I think that the gptsync is not working properly.

[YannBuntu]

When you say "update Refit" I wonder what you mean. Do you mean re-sync partition?

i don't know if Refit proposes a "refresh" option (equivalent of update-grub for grub), or if you need to reinstall refit, but yes the idea is to make Refit scan again the entries.

[whisperedecho]

Hi,

I had Linux Mint 14 dual booted with Windows 7 Home (OEM) on a Sony Vaio laptop and decided to uninstall Linux Mint. I went into the Partition Manager in Windows and deleted the partitions where Linux Mint was residing and assigned the space back to Windows.

I forgot that this would delete GRUB in the process and make my system unbootable. Now I can't boot into Windows at all and I've been able to use the Linux Mint Live CD but even if I try to re-install Linux Mint, now it is saying there are no other operating systems detected even though your program was able to find Windows.

I'm trying to restore the Windows 7 MBR and am not having any success. I've tried several different methods and finally found yours which seems to have helped some.

When I reboot, I get the message "BOOTMGR IS MISSING. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart". I'm having trouble locating my Windows 7 disc to do an MBR recovery.

Here is my pastebin: http://paste2.org/p/2721385

Any ideas on what else I can try? I'm going to keep looking to see if I can find my Windows 7 disc. Thanks in advance for any help that you can provide.

EDIT: Found my Windows 7 disc and am restoring the MBR.

[mörgæs]

@mörgæs: what was the resulting URL please? (at least it should have warned that "No OS was found")

Hi, here is the boot info script:
http://paste2.org/p/2722436

It was created by clicking Create boot info summary right after boot, that is without using the repair option.

Let me know if there is more I can provide.

(I know that the clock was not set correctly when I ran the script)

[oldfred]

@whisperedecho
Your sda2 is 100MB which is the typical Windows boot partition that should show the bootmgr & /boot/BCD files that it needs to boot with. That partition should be NTFS and have the boot flag.
But script was not able to mount it, so it either was damaged or perhaps just needs chkdsk. But It may need to be seen as NTFS for any of that to work. I would see what testdisk says about that partition as if NTFS it should have a backup to the partition boot sector and testdisk can restore that.

@mörgæs
Your BootInfo shows no hard drive? Was it not plugged in or is BIOS now not seeing drive?