How to boot from grub? Harddisk failure?

[s-ett]

So, I have a laptop where I dualboot Xubuntu and Windows 10, but Xubuntu boots by default. But suddenly I get grub command line instead when I boot! I also see that if I boot Windows 10 instead, Windows is unable to shut down the computer, instead it seems to just reboot (so maybe this is a hardware issue?)

Using ls in GNU Grub 2.02 I see that I have hd0 and hd0,gpt1-7. And an error: failure reading sector 0x801 from `hd0'.

gpt 7 is lost+found and my home directory (my files are still there it seems)
ext2 file system

gpt6 is /, the root
ext2

gpt1-5 is unknown.
gpt1 gives the same error message again when using ls (hd0,gpt1), except it is sector 0x802

I was able to start loading the kernel, but then there was something with initframfs (if I remember correctly) I didn't understand

How do I fix this without breaking anything?

[oldfred]

Lets see details, use ppa version with your live installer (2nd option) or any working install, not older Boot-Repair ISO:
Please copy & paste the pastebin link to the Boot-info summary report ( do not post report), do not run the auto fix till reviewed.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Did Windows do an update & both reset itself to first in boot order & turn fast start up back on.
Make sure fast start up is off.

Can you boot recovery mode from grub menu? Second entry.

Do you have good backups?
If not do that first.

[s-ett]

Ok, so I download and boot the Boot-Repair to get the report, but it won't autofix anything? Or do you mean a Xubuntu installation image?

Not sure what happened. The problem seem to have started when suddenly Windows was booting. Not sure what caused that, I haven't been using Windows for a while. It's possible I hit a key that made it change to Windows during booting.


No idea how to boot recovery mode


Too long since I've done any backups. I suppose I can just boot from USB and backup first, but I'd ideally prefer to not do a clean install if possible

[ajgreeny]

If you still have the USB or DVD that you used to install the system boot to that, install the boot-repair package from the PPA, as mentioned by oldfred, and in my signature below and follow the instructions there to run the Boot-Info-Script.

Do not run the default repair just yet but simply copy back here the pastebin link you get which will show us a lot more about your system and may tell us all that's needed to get you up and running again..

[s-ett]

Ok, and it doesn't matter if the USB files I'll be booting are from 2018?

[oldfred]

As long as it is a current version, like 18.04 LTS, but not 18.10 or other EoL versions.
Otherwise create a new flash drive from download of current ISO.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

But it sounds like Windows updates reset some things.
Windows also can update UEFI and that usually restores many UEFI settings to defaults. So also check those. I have to keep a list.

[s-ett]

https://pastebin.com/DfybLg7m


Weird, it said I need to enable legacy mode, but both Windows and Xubuntu should be in UEFI mode. I did not notice any BIOS settings changing. The Ubuntutest boot option was just me trying to see if I could fix the problem

[oldfred]

Boot-Repair did not see your ESP - efi system partition, so that is why it suggested a BIOS/Legacy/CSM install of grub. Do not do that.

Your sda1 is not shown & files in it are not shown.
But UEFI shows boot entry for some ESP partition.
Fstab shows sda1 as the ESP.
Fdisk shows from partition table that sda1 is/was ESP.

But no files nor internal info was shown for sda1, as if it had been erased, but partition table not updated?
Can you manually mount sda1 as FAT32/vfat and see files?

First try dosfsck. Must be unmounted when you run this.
sudo /sbin/fsck.vfat -V <the fat32 device>
sudo fsck.vfat -t -a /dev/sda1
man dosfsck

If we have to totally recreate the ESP, you then have to totally reinstall grub boot loader and Windows boot loader and delete old UEFI entries that have old GUID in them. UEFI uses GUID of ESP to know which partition to find the efi boot files.

[s-ett]

GParted showed reading errors from sda1 too. And said it has no file system.

Trying fsck.vfat -V I get 'Read 512 bytes at 0:Input/output error'

fsck.vfat -t -a -v gives the same

Is the partition totally broken?

[s-ett]

badblocks found 4 bad blocks on sda1, (4/0/0 errors)

Edit: I think it said 0 1 2 3