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

[twistdhood]

Hi All,

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10. Upon reboot I get a Grub Error 18 and followed instructions up to the point it recommends running boot-repair and posting questions to this forum. My pastebin url is: http://paste.ubuntu.com/5688128

Oddly I note the boot-repair does not provide any option other than the perform boot-info analysis. There is no 'button' for automatic repair or anything like that...thoughts?

Any help at this point would be appreciated. I don't monkey in the world of mbr or things like that but am pretty capable otherwise.

[oldfred]

@twistdhood
Boot-Repair is not offering to fix anything because it did not see anything. All the tools require a partition table to know what is where. Yours showed this:
Invalid MBR Signature found.

I might try testdisk and see if it can find old partitions.

repairs including testdisk info & link to testdisk, testdisk is in repository and on most repairCDs
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p21.html
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/...rdeletedfiles/

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Da...st%20Partition
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DataRecovery


http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Analyse

[FunkyFlashFive]

Hey guys,

Been using Ubuntu Studio for about a year and a half on my desktop as the only OS, and recently got a new laptop with Win 8 preinstalled. I pulled the old harddrive from my broken laptop and wiped it before putting it in the 2nd hd bay of my new laptop to use a separate drive for ubuntu to avoid any resizing issues on the windows drive. I got Ubuntu Studio 12.04.2 x64 installed on the clean drive by manually partitioning it within the live usb and it installed and booted fine, but win 8 failed to boot, so I tried boot-repair. My URL is/was http://paste.ubuntu.com/5669134/ Currently windows tries to troubleshoot and then asks to "refresh" instead of booting, or sometimes hangs on the spinning icon. ubuntu boots fine on its own or from the grub menu. at this point I'm willing to try almost anything.

Thanks in advance

FF5

[oldfred]

@FunkyFlashFive
Somewhere you booted in BIOS mode not UEFI and ran repairs.
So you have two efi partitions on sda, and you can only have one. With UEFI and gpt partitioning you use the boot flag to define an efi partition. In BIOS/MBR you use the boot flag on the bootable Windows install partition so Windows knows what partition to boot from. But with gpt you never put a boot flag on the Windows partition.

So use gparted and click on sda4 and right click manage flags and remove boot flag. I think then you may be able to boot Windows.

You have an efi partition on each drive which I consider a good idea, but sdb1 has no boot files. Even if you keep booting from sda2's efi boot files I might copy Ubuntu's boot files into sdb1 so that drive might boot without the sda drive. More just for emergency use if (when?) sda fails.

[FunkyFlashFive]

Removed the boot flag with gparted and tried booting windows, no luck. I get an automated repairs screen for a while and then am told it didn't work. Should I try boot repair again from my ubuntu install or live usb?

Also, Should I start a new thread for this? I wouldn't want to take away from the good work going on here

[oldfred]

If you want I can move posts to new thread, with your own title.
I am not sure how many look at a 100 page thread, but not many besides Yann & I post on UEFI issues.

You can post a new link to a new BootInfo report, not sure I can see anything else.
It may need secure boot on for Windows to work and Ubuntu with the signed versions of shim & kernel.
Some just boot.
What system is this?

[FunkyFlashFive]

As long as I'm not stepping on anybody's feet here I'm happy to stay in this thread.

I have secure boot enabled, and it's a Dell i17rse (7720)

the new bootinfo is here http://paste.ubuntu.com/5693528/

[oldfred]

It does not look like you have the signed versions of grub & kernel installed. If you want secure boot, you will need those.
Windows should boot directly from UEFI menu. Or else then Windows needs its own repairs. Not sure how with UEFI to get into the Windows repair console as you boot, but that is the sda1 partition now, but has no boot files.

Other Dell's and what they did.
Installing Ubuntu 12.10 x64 on Dell XPS 13 Alongside Windows from USB New user with Details post 10
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2108450
Dell Inspiron 17R SE - 12.04.2 but otherwise similar to XPS13 above
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2125701
Dell XPS 14 Ultrabook what works
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2116597
Dell 14z used Dell Recovery and Refind
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2125397
HOWTO Ubuntu 12.10 x64 Dell XPS 14 (UEFI + Intel Rapid Start Technology + Flashcache), bumblebee - Details
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2117166
Dell XPS13 general info mega-thread
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1932965

[JGeZau]

I am running this tool off of the Linux Secure CD, after I click "Recommended Repair", it gives me below two commands to run

sudo chroot "/mnt/boot-sav/sda5" dpkg --configure -a
sudo chroot "/mnt/boot-sav/sda5" yum erase-y grub*-common

After attempting to run the first command, it gives me the below message

chroot: failed to run command 'dpkg': no such file or directory

I know 'dpkg' is installed because when I type it by itself it gives me some options to run. Like option '--help', etc

What do I need to do?

Thanks

[oldfred]

Since the next command is yum, I assume your install in sda5 is not Debian based.
Boot-Repair wants to make sure your system is up to date and then un-install all of grub and then reinstall it.
Perhaps in your version the options are different for dpkg?