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

[YannBuntu]

@annnomius: if the "Windows on sdc1" entry works, you can delete the sdb1/boot folder (or rename it to sdb1/old_boot ), then type "sudo update-grub" from Ubuntu.

[RockOrSomething]

I fixed my install problem by following the instructions in this thread. No problems - just writing to say thank you, and merci!

[annnomius]

@yannbuntu: you are awesome! thank you!
::ann

[lemonoid]

First of all, I would like to say thank you. Second of all, I would like to say thank you. Third of all, well, you get the point. I'm utterly speechless right now at how easy it was to just fix my mind-boggling error with this tool. I grabbed a CD from campus, burned the iso in a matter of three minutes, popped it in my cd-drive and booted. After trying various live disks and USBs and failing to load any of them, this actually loaded and gave me some functionality. The GUI of this program is quite amazing, and the added functionality of internet access tops off the cake. I have an old desktop that I like to use to make my builds for Android, that has been sitting unused for about three months because of a broken monitor, I have my laptop, and the desktop was at my parents' house. I grabbed a new monitor and the desktop and brought it to school. When I booted up I couldn't remember my password for Mint LXDE to save my life, which is weird. Which was dual-booting next to Win7. Unfortunately I couldn't find my current Ubuntu USB installer so I just popped in my Mint installer again and made a third OS install. I wanted to get rid of the old installation so that I have more space and CPU capability, so I was advised that I could simply just delete the partition of my old Mint... Well that didn't work so well. When I did a reboot, to actually try to install Ubuntu, all that came up was 'no such partition'
grub rescue>
And I'm not too familiar with the grub rescue command interface. So I was getting frustrated because I couldn't get anything to boot, whether it be HDD, USB, or CD. Then after a ton of browsing and link/forum jumping I was brought to this program. Seemed easy enough, with options to repair MBR, purge GRUB, and a slew of simplified options, it seemed like a cakewalk. I used the recommended repair, copied the log into my pastebin, it seemed like it made sense and went along with my prediction for what was wrong, did two reboots and now I'm back up and running, about to install Ubuntu. Thanks so much for this tool I will be spreading the word about my happiness and experience with this program. You guys are a lifesaver.

[YannBuntu]

@RockOrSomething & annnomius & lemonoid: thanks for the messages, and happy ubuntu-ing

@translators: there are new strings to translate https://translations.launchpad.net/boot-repair/trunk

@packagers: it would be nice if someone could help packaging for Debian https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/806291

[YannBuntu]

@all: here is an example where Boot-Repair successfully fixed GRUB on a EFI Windows/Ubuntu dualboot system: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...-repair&page=2
The original problem is that Ubuntu was installed in non-EFI mode.

For everybody's understanding, I would like to explain how Boot-Repair could fix this problem:
- Boot-Repair detected that Windows was installed in EFI mode, so it purged grub-pc and installed grub-efi instead. It also added /boot/efi in fstab.
- The buggy "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda3)" entry in the GRUB menu is created automatically by GRUB. This is the GRUB bug #1024383. You can remove this buggy entry by disabling os-prober (I don't recommend it) or via GRUB-Customizer (be careful this tool can bring new problems), or by editing /boot/grub/grub.cfg (that's what I would do, but you have to redo it each time grub is updated). I don't want to automatically remove this entry via Boot-Repair because I hope one day GRUB devs will solve this bug.
- As a workaround to this bug, Boot-Repair scans all Windows EFI files and adds an entry for them in the GRUB menu. (except bootmgr.efi which I have been reported it is useless). That's why now JKyleOKC has 3 custom entries:
"Windows bootmgfw.efi.bkp, generated by Boot-Repair"
"Windows memtest.efi, generated by Boot-Repair"
"Boot bootx64.efi.bkp, generated by Boot-Repair"
(if one of these entries is buggy, please tell me. The 1st and the 3rd should both boot Windows.)
- last point: some people suspect that some EFI firmwares (BIOS) are not EFI-standard compliant and can't be setup to boot to another EFI file than a Windows EFI file (Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi Microsoft/Boot/bootx64.efi Boot/bootx64.efi). That's why I made Boot-Repair rename the Windows EFI files (add .bkp extension) and copy the GRUB EFI file to the original Windows EFI files location. This has several advantages: at reboot we are sure that the BIOS will boot GRUB even if BIOS is blocked on Windows EFI file, or if user doesn't know/think about setting up BIOS. Disadvantage is that if the user wants to uninstall Ubuntu he will have to rename the bkp files (this will be done automatically if he uses OS-Uninstaller)

Of course, any comment/suggestion welcome.

[RamTamTam]

Hello YannBuntu

First of all, my english is very very bad but i will try it.

I am a user of the german forum ubuntuusers.de and we are playing with different EFI-Boards. We figured out, that the NVRAM-Update only works fine, when efibootmgr ist installed. In some cases (with the Desktop-CD/64 bit), the program will not be installed and then we need to do the same as you: renaming and moving the bootloader.efi. An apt-get install efibootmgr before installing fixes the bug. I do not know if it helps you with your problem, bueno, it ist a information.

Saludos from Chile

P.S. I wrote a script whose main task is listing connected devices without root, something like fdisk+blkid+mount in one listing, but reading the sysfs-information. It can also list the partitions tables (mbr and gpt) in readable form - this is done with root privileges and hexdump. Perhaps it may be useful to you an the others too, so I'm posting the links
* https://launchpad.net/lsdisk
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdisk

[goldie1]

Hi, YannBuntu. First post on the forum.

My story is long and I've been trying to fix my computer for some days now. Here's a quick recap:

I had Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.10 on my computer but after some reliability issues, I decided to format my drive to dump Windows and do a clean install of Ubuntu 12.04.
So I downloaded the .iso and used UNetbootin to create a live USB. Though I had problems to install the system (the process got stuck on the same point many times), I managed to do it. All seemed fine, then.
But when I booted it for the first time after the install, I got the grub rescue screen. I booted it again and this time I got the GRUB menu but the system wasn't there, just the memory test.
So I used my live USB to install Boot Repair. I chose the Recommended Repair option and after 30 or 40 minutes of this:
http://i.imgur.com/1kqPA.png

I got this:
http://i.imgur.com/Dap6V.png


I thought it could be an issue with the pen drive so I decided to try Boot Repair on a CD. It was even worse. Not only it didn't find my wi-fi connection but it didn't work with the wired one either. Seriously, I don't know what to do anymore. I just want to boot my system, nothing else.

Here's the system report:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/1180873/

P.S: Sorry for eventual misspellings, english is not my first language.

[YannBuntu]

- last point: some people suspect that some EFI firmwares (BIOS) are not EFI-standard compliant and can't be setup to boot to another EFI file than a Windows EFI file (Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi Microsoft/Boot/bootx64.efi Boot/bootx64.efi). That's why I made Boot-Repair rename the Windows EFI files (add .bkp extension) and copy the GRUB EFI file to the original Windows EFI files location. This has several advantages: at reboot we are sure that the BIOS will boot GRUB even if BIOS is blocked on Windows EFI file, or if user doesn't know/think about setting up BIOS. Disadvantage is that if the user wants to uninstall Ubuntu he will have to rename the bkp files (this will be done automatically if he uses OS-Uninstaller)

Here are 2 screenshots showing:
1) the possibility to enable/disable the backup+renaming of the original Windows EFI files. (enabled by default when reinstalling GRUB)



2) when Windows EFI backups are detected on the disk, the possibility to restore them (enabled by default when no Linux distribution is detected on the disk)

[YannBuntu]

We figured out, that the NVRAM-Update only works fine, when efibootmgr ist installed. In some cases (with the Desktop-CD/64 bit), the program will not be installed and then we need to do the same as you: renaming and moving the bootloader.efi. An apt-get install efibootmgr before installing fixes the bug.

efibootmgr is a dependency of grub-efi. When
efibootmgr is not installed, that means that grub-efi was not installed. Probably the Ubuntu installer made the mistake of installing grub-pc instead of grub-efi. In this case, you should just need to convert your installed Ubuntu into EFI mode, which means:
1) create an EFI partition (FAT32, 100MB~250MB, start of the disk, boot flag). This can be done via Gparted.
2) add /boot/efi in fstab + install grub-efi. This can easily be done via the "Separate /boot/efi" option of Boot-Repair.

* https://launchpad.net/lsdisk
* http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdisk

Thanks , I will look at it.