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

[oldfred]

Are you sure it is not grub, but a video issue?
I do not know RAID and how that might cause issues but you seem to be just booting from sdd in UEFI mode.

Because you only have one install grub will not normally show a menu. And with UEFI shift key does not always work. Some use Esp key and that may work to get grub menu.

What video card. You may need nomodeset.
How to set NOMODESET and other kernel boot options in grub2 - both liveCD & first boot, but different
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions
Graphics Resolution- Upgrade /Blank Screen after reboot mega thread - MAFoElffen
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1743535

[7wonders]

turns out it was a combination of things. I remember having to do some hacks on the grub/efi partition when I first installed due to the motherboard being new (then) and have not/not needed a bios update since. I just updated the bios (its a p8z68v pro MB) and that seemed to add the EFI support that I probably needed the first time around also. That at least got my grub back and now I am reaching login tty. Running do-release-upgrade now and see if that brings me kde back also! Thanks for the help OF.

[orlynow]

Hey there YannBuntu!

First post here as I just started using Ubuntu (and love it). I do have a slight problem now when I installed Ubuntu side by side Windows XP on my desktop. It worked well for the first little while... but after turning my computer off for a few days and then turning it back on... I go to select Windows XP from the GRUB screen... and it goes to boot up but it just stays at a black screen with a dash blinking at the top left corner of the screen. I tried using Boot Repair. Once completed, it said it was successful... but I am still running into the exact same issue. Any ideas? The Bootinfo URL that was created after running Boot Repair is: paste.ubuntu.com/5646600/

Thanks!

[oldfred]

@orlynow
I do not see any major issues with perhaps that boot partition is beyond 100GB on drive as reported in last line of BootInfo report. But if you can boot Ubuntu that is not an issue.
If you get grub menu and Windows does not start, it probably is a Windows internal issue and Boot-Repair cannot fix those. You need your Windows XP disk and use the repair console. Often chkdsk works, but it may need other repairs also.

To run the Recovery Console from the Windows XP startup disks or the Windows XP CD-ROM, follow these steps:
1. Insert the Windows XP startup disk into the floppy disk drive, or insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.

Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.
2. When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3. If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.
4. When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5. At the command prompt, type commands one at a time.

FIXMBR C: #do not run if you still want grub in the MBR
FIXBOOT C:
BOOTCFG /rebuild # rebuilds boot.ini
chkdsk c: /r

If you run fixMBR, that puts the Windows boot loader into the MBR to directly boot Windows. IF you do that then you have to use your live Ubuntu install to reinstall grub to MBR. You can use Boot-Repair to fix it then.

[candtalan]

[snip] If you run fixMBR, that puts the Windows boot loader into the MBR to directly boot Windows. IF you do that then you have to use your live Ubuntu install to reinstall grub to MBR. You can use Boot-Repair to fix it then.

My understanding has been that boot-repair (in live session) would, by itself, reconfigure grub folowing fixmbr - including reinstall of grub into MBR, and produce a dual bootable start up situation. Perhaps I have misunderstood something in your comment, which includes use of Ubuntu live session (also?). (?)

[oldfred]

If you install Boot-Repair into a working Ubuntu but then install or repair a Windows install, you will not be able to boot your Ubuntu install on hard drive. You will need a liveCD (and add Boot-Repair) or the Boot-Repair CD that is a liveCD with Boot-Repair already installed. You can also use liveCD to repair grub with a few terminal command lines.
I like to have lots of ways to boot system to make repairs or fixes. I have Ubuntu live installers, gparted ISO, parted magic ISO, Boot-Repair's new smaller ISO, SuperGrub, Knoppix and maybe several others. I used to make a lot of CDs, but now use a couple of flash drives.

[trunksy]

I'm having a problem running boot-repair. It says that I need to enable the [linux] package and [grub2] package from CentOS. Here's my URL from the app with my particular info:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/5653477

[oldfred]

@trunksy
I do not know Centos. You may have to see if Yann has tested Boot-Repair with your system. The RAID also adds some issues. What version of grub does Centos use and what is the package name. In Ubuntu grub2 is either grub-pc for BIOS or grub-efi for UEFI systems.

[orlynow]

@oldfred

thanks for the reply!

I will give your recommendation a try and see what happens. I will let you know how I make out. Thanks again!

[jsedwards]

I have an Intel MacMini (Macmini3.1 - Core 2 Duo) that had OS X 10.5.8, Kubuntu 10.10 and rEFIt 0.13 on it. They both booted fine, but I wanted to update both and switch to Lubuntu instead of KDE.

First I tried updating OS X to 10.6.3 from disc, it refused because it said the "Macintosh HD" could not be used for startup. I spent some time trying various things I found on the Internet but never could get it to work. Finally decided I could live without updating OS X right now.

So I did a clean install of Lubuntu 13.04 in the same partition that Kubuntu had been in, and installed GRUB in that partition (/dev/sda4).

But then it wouldn't boot into Linux, I would get "error: file not found" and the "grub rescue>" prompt.

So then I decided to try updating rEFIt to 0.14 and see if the installation would fix it, but it just added a second Linux boot option in rEFIt, one says "Boot Linux from HD" and the other says "Boot Linux from Partition 4". Both end up at the same "error: file not found".

I just tried boot-repair and the first time I booted after that it I didn't drop to the Grub prompt, but the screen went black. Finally after about 10 minutes I assume it was stuck and rebooted. This time it was the same as before: "error: file not found". Boot-repair gave me this URL: http://paste.ubuntu.com/5663204/

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-Scott