[SOLVED] Cant boot win7, cant boot ubuntu, properly

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 10:29 AM

Maybe it is complicated? I ran boot repair, this is the result text
http://paste.ubuntu.com/12245491/

So when I select windows 7, it bounces back to the boot loader.
I can not get them both to boot with grub.

Only way to fix so win7 can boot is load windows install DVD and bootrec.exe to repair the mbr. Then linux wont boot, only way to fix, is boot a liveusb and run boot repair, then windows 7 wont boot. Here is the pastebin link http://paste.ubuntu.com/12245491/

And before all this mess, my linux install corrupted gnome shell so it refused to boot and I could only boot ubuntu regular desktop. SO I reinstalled ubuntu and got gnome shell working and this is when windows quit working. I have a separate /home partition and had 2 drives, one just data, the os's and /home are all on one drive. I have disconnected the extra drive to be less confusing for grub???

It used to work fine. Now, it is a mess I suppose, very painful to have to do all this when I want to boot another os.

Ihatewindows522 · 09-01-2015, 10:43 AM

From Ubuntu, can you run

Code:

sudo update-grub

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 10:53 AM

I tried it, completed without error, but still no booting of windows
So then I tried sudo install grub dev/sda
that did not work either.

I was wondering about trying this?

Quote:

How to Restore GRUB2 after installing Windows:

Boot from an Ubuntu Live CD or Live USB
Once up and running, Open a Terminal
Type sudo su (press enter after typing each command)
Type fdisk -l Note which device contains your Linux partition (IE: /dev/sda1)
Note which device contains your Linux partition (IE: /dev/sda1)
Type mount /dev/sdx# /mnt (replacing x# with your actual device and partition number)
Type mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
Type mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
Type cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf
Type chroot /mnt
Type grub-install --recheck /dev/sdx (replacing x with your actual device)
Type reboot (to reboot your PC)

Make sure to remove your Live USB or CD. Upon reboot you should be presented
with a GRUB2 menu. However, Windows is missing. Now, I show you how to fix that.
Making GRUB 2 detect Windows Installs:

Proceed to boot into your Linux environment.
Open a terminal and type sudo update-grub (enter your root password when prompted)

actually since I am in ubuntu now, I just did this

Quote:

scott@scott-P5QC:~$ sudo grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
[sudo] password for scott:
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installation finished. No error reported.
scott@scott-P5QC:~$

What do you think?

here is this one

Quote:

scott@scott-P5QC:~$ sudo update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-62-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-62-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
done
scott@scott-P5QC:~$

Ihatewindows522 · 09-01-2015, 11:06 AM

Go into a terminal and type

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

and make sure your W7 partition is bootable.

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 11:09 AM

ok, did a reboot with same result. It seems to me that I can restore the windows MBR ok, it will boot windows of course no grub menu appears.
Then when I reboot liveusb and run boot repair, it destroy windows mbr, and it can no longer boot windows, but ubuntu boots ok.

So how is the boot-repair program messing up so badly? Does it follow some kind of previous paths for grub or start anew?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
I do the number 2 option

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 11:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ihatewindows522

Go into a terminal and type

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

and make sure your W7 partition is bootable.

here is the result, look ok or no?

Quote:

scott@scott-P5QC:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for scott:

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb822ff08

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 245151899 122575918+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 245153790 1465147391 609996801 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 842551296 1465147391 311298048 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 284217344 292028415 3905536 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 292030464 842549247 275259392 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 245153792 284215295 19530752 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 4004 MB, 4004511744 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1017 cylinders, total 7821312 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d5237

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 62 7818695 3909317 b W95 FAT32
scott@scott-P5QC:~$

sdb is a flash drive

Ihatewindows522 · 09-01-2015, 11:20 AM

Well, the partition is indeed bootable, so now let's try a different bootloader and see if you have the same issue.

I want you to download Plop Boot Manager, burn it to a CD, and see if you can boot from the first partition (Windows) using that.

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 11:40 AM

I can try, I reloaded windows7 DVD. a simple
bootrec /fixmbr, does not work, but
bootrec /fixboot did let windows boot, but no grub menu.

So in windows, I can use cdburnerXP, will that make the CD bootable? Just write the files in the folder to a cd? Nothing else?

Otherwise what in ubuntu can i use?

Ihatewindows522 · 09-01-2015, 12:07 PM

You just need to write plpbt.iso to the disk and boot from it.

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ihatewindows522

You just need to write plpbt.iso to the disk and boot from it.

the download is a zip?? not an iso.
I tried some CD and DVD but get errors, so all my disks are no good....
I tried this to usb, but it wont boot the usb even though I hit F8 and see the flash drive in the boot menu.
https://www.plop.at/en/ploplinux/live/usb.html#wiusb

And the directions make no sense, the directory 'ploplinux' does not exit in the zip, it is 'plpbt-5.0.15'

ok, ok, it is all a mess, that is not the same file.

Quote:

2.1. Make USB drive bootable step-by-step

Requirements to make an USB drive bootable:

You must have administrator rights to finish all steps.
File system on the device must be FAT.
The Plop Linux file ploplinux-4.3.0-x86_64.zip
The program syslinux.exe.

Let's start

Plug in your USB drive.

In my example, the drive letter of the USB drive is F:.

Check the file system. Use the right mouse click on F: and then Properties from the context menu. You can see now, how much space is left on the device and file system type. It should be FAT12, FAT16 or FAT32.

Extract the Plop Linux files from ploplinux-4.3.0-x86_64.zip on the USB drive.

The directories ploplinux and syslinux must be in the root directory F:\ of your USB drive.

Download syslinux.exe to your desktop.

Open the Command Prompt (in Accessories of your Windows menu).

Change the directory to your Desktop.

cd Desktop

Run syslinux with your drive letter as parameter.
BE SURE TO USE THE CORRECT DRIVE LETTER. If you use ex. C: then your windows will not boot up next time and you have to repair it with the windows rescue console.
syslinux f:

Your usb drive should be bootable now.

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 12:27 PM

https://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

Ok, how to turn an zip into an iso?
When I decompress the zip, I get a directory.

I wish you could hear my drive screaming with a CD in there.
They do not tell you but there is a small iso in the zipped folder.
See I am like a computer myself, I need exact instructions sometimes.
I may have to reboot and replace the CD writer, I never use CD's anymore.

Well, maybe I should boot a liveusb, then redownload and use unetbootin to burn the iso to a small flash drive....

HaHa, unetbootin in a liveusb is not available, dependencies not satisfiable.
There is a windows version, downloading it now, and it is so slow to download, it is crawling.
http://unetbootin.github.io/

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 01:29 PM

Inexplicably, I managed to get it booting both win7 and ubuntu!

Ok, I also managed to get the odd plop usb flash boot loader to run.
It showed 2 partitions, both were called HDA1? Selecting either one booted win7.

So I pulled the power plug.
Then I booted liveusb ubuntu 14.04
Then I reran again boot -repair
Instead of selecting normal repair, I went to advanced and told it to erase grub completely.
Then it ran and eventually pops up a warning, 'If I remove grub computer will be unbootable', so I clicked cancel.
Then I ran boot-repair again
here is the new report
http://paste.ubuntu.com/12247350/
So I shut down and verified both win7 and ubuntu now boot fine.

Could it be that when I told boot-repair to erase grub completely, but still cancelled at the warning, that it made some changes??, and that is why it now works again?

Also there are two .iso files, I chose the bigger file to write to usb.
plop boot loader shows up in unetbootin as 'default' entry.
click it and it loads an almost unreadable red window with lines running thru it.

picture of it.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-Y...2/DSCN0347.JPG

Ihatewindows522 · 09-01-2015, 02:16 PM

Sorry I didn't get back for a while.

Although I can't explain it, you managed to fix it. Sorry I wasn't much help.

sdowney717 · 09-01-2015, 02:33 PM

Thanks for caring!
Looking at the pastebin boot repair reports, there is a noticeable change. Grub is installed in MBR of both reports but in
non working report, grub is installed sda1 NTFS, which is bad.

Quote:

Boot Info Script e7fc706 + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info 9Feb2015]

============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================

=> Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of
the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos8)/boot/grub.
=> Syslinux MBR (4.04 and higher) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.

sda1: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Grub2 (v1.99-2.00)
Boot sector info: Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the boot sector of sda1
and looks at sector 270660064 of the same hard drive
for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos8)/boot/grub. No errors found in the Boot
Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows 98
Boot files: /boot.ini /bootmgr /Boot/BCD
/Windows/System32/winload.exe /ntldr /NTDETECT.COM
/IO.SYS /MSDOS.SYS /COMMAND.COM

working report, notice grub not installed sda1 NTFS, which is good!
Not sure exactly how it got installed wrong, but must be when I reinstalled ubuntu.
And not sure how I removed it except that I had told it to erase grub, but did not let it finish, I hit cancel.
So somehow must be a way to delete grub from sda1 NTFS partition another way?

Quote:

Boot Info Script e7fc706 + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info 9Feb2015]

============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================

=> Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of
the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos8)/boot/grub.
=> Syslinux MBR (4.04 and higher) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.

sda1: __________________________________________________________________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows 7/2008: NTFS
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows 98
Boot files: /boot.ini /bootmgr /Boot/BCD
/Windows/System32/winload.exe /ntldr /NTDETECT.COM
/IO.SYS /MSDOS.SYS /COMMAND.COM