Dual boot - win7/ubuntu windows update failed - how to restore and keep grub setup?

[oldfred]

Windows normally puts all its boot files into one boot partition if BIOS or ESP if UEFI.
And then BCD is the menu on what Windows to boot.

There are work arounds for creating duplicate boot if BIOS or duplicate /EFI/Windows partitions. You only can boot one from UEFI/BIOS, but grub can find both if configured correctly & once boot has started, it should not matter. Issue on Windows 10 fast start up is there whether UEFI or BIOS, it must be off. I think it has to be off to dual boot Windows 7.

May be best to see details, use ppa version with your live installer (2nd option) or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO:
Please copy & paste link to the Boot-info summary report ( do not post report), the auto fix sometimes can create more issues.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

[JimLS]

I discovered in bios that the boot order had "windows boot manager" first and reset that to the drive name. When I tried to boot it gave an error of file /boot/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod not found. So grub is now trying to boot and not sure what the problem is with the missing file.

I looked at the power settings in win10 and fast boot is turned off. Not sure why I got the message that it had a similar issue.

[oldfred]

That typically is that you have grub installed twice, one old one & it is booting the older one which is not totally configured anymore.

Windows does turn fast boot back on. Or hibernation could be set. Or NTFS could need chkdsk. My old XP took 5 min to boot. After chkdsk it only took 3 min, but it had no other indication that system needed chkdsk. (Ubuntu booted in 40 sec on that old system).

Need to see Summary Report from Boot-Repair.

[JimLS]

Is it possible I have some mix of UEFI and legacy? Gparted reports the disk as "msdos" partitioning but windows 10 system info states it is UEFI mode. My bois is american megatrends from 2013 and seems to allow either (on some CDs if I look at boot options it offers to boot the disk in UEFI or AHCI but I think if I boot automatically it goes to UEFI. I would expect win10 would have refused to install to the drive if it was MBR but the install cd was running in UEFI mode...

I ran gparted for this from a Xubuntu 18.04 live cd. The same cd wouldn't run boot-repair (installed via command line) in UEFI mode and said I needed to boot in legacy mode. So I booted and selected AHCI option. But I am a little scared now to run boot-repair as things seem very weird...

I was wanting to keep the old system around for a while while getting the new system going but perhaps the best bet is to wipe the drive and start over?

Just ran fdisk -l /dev/sda
which reported Disklabel type: dos
which I think means the disk is MBR and seems to agree with boot-repair message.

Is MBR/GPT independent of AHCI/UEFI? I am not clear on the terminology.

[oldfred]

Windows only boots in UEFI mode from gpt partitioned drives.
Windows only boots in BIOS mode from MBR(msdos) partitioned drives.

How you boot install media UEFI or BIOS, is then how it installs. You can normally boot flash drive or DVD/CD in either mode, but may require UEFI/BIOS settings to allow boot. But default boot of installed system depends on settings in UEFI/BIOS and may not match how you have installed.

With new UEFI systems and if Windows is installed in UEFI mode, you should always boot in UEFI mode. If you do not seem to be able to boot flash drive/DVD installer it could be UEFI settings, what choice you made, ISO not quite correct, or issue with DVD or flash drive. I used to have a lot of issues with bad burns, so changed to use flash drives only.

Boot-Repair report shows all the details.

[JimLS]

Windows only boots in UEFI mode from gpt partitioned drives.
Windows only boots in BIOS mode from MBR(msdos) partitioned drives.

That doesn't appear to be the case. When booted into the SSD win10, disk part reports the disk as non-GPT (no asterisk in the GPT column) which would be MBR but system information reports "Bios mode UEFI".

I think what may have happened is the install media booted in UEFI (default mode) and installed UEFI. I found one place that said this was possible and another that said it wasn't.

But I could be all wrong too...

Looks like I need to reinstall win10 by booting the install cd in AHCI mode?

[JimLS]

Here is the boot repair summary

http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/bmB35hDDmK/

[yancek]

Lines 577-589 give information on windows EFI files but there is nothing there that is Ubuntu. The drive shows as Legacy (msdos) on line 52. Windows won't install UEFI on that drive. Do you have Legacy/CSM enabled in the BIOS? Boot repair also shows UUID=6AACE2B7ACE27CC7 /boot/efi ntfs defaults 0 1 in /etc/fstab of Ubuntu. That is on line 464. An EFI partition should be on a vfat filesystem not ntfs and that UUID is sda3, not sure what that is on your system but it does have windows boot files. sda1 is marked as active/bootable. Enable Legacy/CSM boot in the BIOS firmware.

Boot repair shows you have Grub in the MBR of the drive pointing to the Grub files on sda2. Are you able to boot Ubuntu? If so, do that and run: sudo update-grub

[JimLS]

Thanks but I have been messing with this for several days so just started fresh. I have backups so set the disk to GPT and reinstalled everything.

[oldfred]

Report shows MBR and BIOS boot install of Windows.
You can use Boot-Repair's advanced modebooted in BIOS mode, to totally reinstall grub to convert from UEFI to BIOS boot. Ubuntu will let you install in UEFI mode to a MBR drive, but that cannot work if Windows is on same drive in BIOS mode. Windows in BIOS mode has to have boot flag on the primary NTFS partition with Windows boot files. UEFI has to have an ESP, and that is set with boot flag. Only one boot flag per drive, so you cannot have Windows boot flag & ESP boot flag.

Or you can convert drive to gpt and then totally reinstall both Windows & Ubuntu.