Forcing System boot up - Solved

[oldfred]

With multiple drives, I often have to manually edit boot stanza as I boot.
My hd0 may become hd1, hd1 then is hd2. But boot drive is always hd0, even if sdd or normally hd3 is used to boot.

May be best to see details, use ppa version with your live installer or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO:
Post the link to the Create BootInfo summary report. Is part of Boot-Repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info and:
https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/

[johncooool]

With multiple drives, I often have to manually edit boot stanza as I boot.
My hd0 may become hd1, hd1 then is hd2. But boot drive is always hd0, even if sdd or normally hd3 is used to boot.

May be best to see details, use ppa version with your live installer or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO:
Post the link to the Create BootInfo summary report. Is part of Boot-Repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info and:
https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/

The problem is that I am working a system that is totally foreign to me. So it is a like bling person trying to see. I have no idea how to solve the problems I face with each error.

I tried running Rescatux to run the boot-info-script and I also tried running boot-repair.

In both cases, it would get to the 1st screen and then stop as if there is some compatibility issue.

I don't know if this is because the system is old and does not have UEFI or some other issue.

I tried searching for information that is related to my problems but could not find.

Do you have any more tips or ideas for me to try out?

Thanks

[oldfred]

If system is broken and even Boot-Repair will not run that is a totally different issue.

What error messages are you getting?

Run these:
sudo parted -l
lsblk -f

[johncooool]

If system is broken and even Boot-Repair will not run that is a totally different issue.

What error messages are you getting?

Run these:
sudo parted -l
lsblk -f

Thanks for tip, I had Grub2win installed and it was blocking the 2 programs from working. I will try to complete your info from before.

[johncooool]

If system is broken and even Boot-Repair will not run that is a totally different issue.

What error messages are you getting?

Run these:
sudo parted -l
lsblk -f

I am adding the below link which contains the report generated by the Boot-Repair software about my system while the HDD is disabled from booting from the BIOS.

Please check it and let me know if there is a way to get it to work.

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/BRPgYkRgKS/

[johncooool]

I don't know if I should run the repair. The PC boots normally as long as the HDD booting is enabled. So what would happen if I repaired it?

Any ideas?

[TheFu]

I don't see any Linux in that boot-info output. Guess I don't understand the goal, since running Linux isn't it.

[oldfred]

Nothing really to repair.
Boot-Repair really is for repair of Linux systems. But with Windows in BIOS mode, it can install a generic Windows type boot loader.

It would install syslinux which is a Windows type boot loader assuming your Windows boot loader must not be working.
It also copies the boot files from sda1 to sda2 as many users do not know Windows has to have the boot partition to boot, and just delete it. Then they have no boot files. With copies in sda2 then that partition is also bootable, if boot flag is on it. Just a backup.

Windows installs the boot partition in the drive set as default in BIOS.
I have seen examples where users had sdb as default. Windows then put boot partition on sdb, but install (the c: drive) on sda. Then users installed Linux on sdb, erasing boot partition and then are not able to boot Windows.

Do not know details on where in BCD Windows has info on which drive to boot from. Old boot.ini with XP had that info on drive & partition.
Windows also does not let you install to USB external drives, so do not think you can have boot partition on a flash drive.
You might be able to remove boot flag and use grub to boot Windows as it just looks for boot files, not boot flag. But then any user with access could add boot flag.

[johncooool]

You are right. The boot partition is not C. it is the 1st one that is 400MB hidden partition.

The information that I found do deactivate "boot flag" is to make the partition inactive. So when I made it inactive the system stopped booting. Luckily I was able to reverse it from Wondershare as it has those tools.

I ran the Boot repair disk and it completed successfully then I enabled the HDD in the boot menu but the Grub menu commands that I tried did not work including the ones you gave me from before. The 1st one you gave is here below has some details about the size of the partition. Should I edit it further?

Windows 7 entry with 100MB initial partition
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry "Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)" {
insmod ntfs
set root=(hd0,1)
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 2ae000d2e000a663
chainloader +1
}
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

alternate to chainloader +1
ntldr /bootmgr

Thanks

[johncooool]

The updated link below shows the installation on the MBR that I did with Boot-repair-Disk

https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/RqWFNmhxqm/

It seems that it is installed on sdb1.

I made a mistake. I think SDB1 is the USB stick I am using to run the program.