New Laptop Struggles - Lenovo Ideapad z585 - no Grub?

[Minipalmer]

So this looks to be a GRUB problem. Here is the output of Boot-repair for your viewing pleasure.

So let's say that in theory I was able to get GRUB to run properly - can anyone even tell me if I have my partitions set up correctly?

http://paste.ubuntu.com/1378629/

[darkod]

It looks fine, but note that there seems to be broken grub on /dev/sdc. You need to make sure in bios you are booting from /dev/sda, the 750GB disk.

Try it and report back. Otherwise it all looks good.

One thing that could be the issue, is that the grub boot files are towards the end of the disk, somewhere around the 570-620GB. On some machines, boot files can't be read if they are beyond 137GB on the hdd. I'm not sure yet if you are affected by this. If you are, you will need a small /boot partition that needs to be somewhere in the first 137GB on the disk.

But first double check what I said above about booting from /dev/sda because you said you see no other OS in the grub menu but grub.cfg clearly shows windows entry. So you might be booting the broken grub from /dev/sdc.

[YannBuntu]

@Minipalmer: please disconnect your 2 USB keys (the 4Gb and the 2GB ones), then reboot and tell us if the GRUB menu still doesn't show Windows?

[Minipalmer]

@Yannbuntu: Sorry, I already removed the GRUB as I needed immediate access to the HDD. However, there was only one usb key (4gb) at the time. The problem still remains that the only option on the GRUB menu, "Ubuntu", would not load either. Just a blank screen.

@Darkod: I'll try and find a tutorial on doing that, as I don't know how. I'll let you know when I have.

[darkod]

At the time of running the bootinfo there seems to be a 2GB SD card connected. I don't know if you removed it later.

If you removed only grub, you can easily add it from a live session. We can help you with the procedure.

If you also removed the ubuntu partitions, there is nothing else to do except a new install if you want to do that.

[Minipalmer]

Aha, I had forgotten about the SD card!

The Ubuntu partitions are still setup. Ubuntu has been installed for weeks now, I still haven't been able to access it. I know how to install GRUB; I did so and could not enter either of my installed OS.

[darkod]

That's because it was booting from the SD card, not the hdd (my guess).

Install grub2 now on the MBR of the hdd and give it a go. If it doesn't work, you can always put windows bootloader back, you seem to know how to do that.

I already mentioned that the bootinfo shows broken grub on the SD card so if it was booting from it all the time, it didn't make a difference what you tried with the grub on the MBR of the hdd.

[Minipalmer]

I will try it tonight. I'm going to chuckle if the SD card is the culprit here.

Should I install it using Boot-repair or just do a straight GRUB install? (Last time was with Boot-repair)

Also, I appreciate the quick and genuine responses. Very helpful.

[darkod]

I would use terminal commands instead of boot-repair, but the choice is yours. BR should work too.

You can boot a live session with a 12.10 cd (it has to be the same version as the installed), and since your root partition is /dev/sda5 all you need to do is:

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

That should install it on the MBR of /dev/sda. Reboot without the cd and try it.

[Minipalmer]

Okay, interesting update:

I tried darkod's recommendation. After restarting, same result: Grub with only a broken Ubuntu option.

So I tried Boot-repair again. This time, functional Grub with 3 Windows 7 options (the others are recovery options I'm assuming), as well as the broken Ubuntu option.

This leads me to believe that I, in fact, have not set up the Ubuntu partitions correctly, and that my Ubuntu installation is broken. Thoughts? Here is the new Boot-repair log:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/1381149/