Computer No Longer Boots Any Operating System
 

Hello there. I recently purchased an ASUS K55A-DH51. It came with a 750GB hard drive with two partitions, one containing the Windows 8 operating system and the other completely blank. You can find the product page here. I thought it would be safe to install the latest version of Fedora on the blank partition. I thought I could run the operating systems side-by-side, which is usually pretty easy to pull off with Linux. I downloaded the Network Install CD and installed Linux on the blank partition and went to boot my computer, only to find out that not only will the hard drive no longer boot either operating system, it doesn't even show as a boot option on the BIOS setup screen. It has completely vanished. It still shows the hard drive on the main hardware page, along with the DVD-R drive, but it isn't shown as a boot option. Did something go wrong when the Linux installation wrote to the Master Boot Record? Is there a way to restore functionality so that I can boot Windows again? This installation was never meant to replace Windows, as I need my Windows installation and didn't think of making a backup disc before doing this. Therefore, if I can either get the dual partitions to work together or at least get the hard drive functioning again so that I can boot up Windows again it would be a big relief. I've had this computer about two weeks. I hope I haven't destroyed it already.

Also, I ran fdisk on it and these are the results I came up with:

Thanks for your help.

-Ben

If you are using the Fedora CD, boot it, open a terminal and log in as root user and type: gparted. I believe Fedora has GParted on the installation CD, I don't use Fedora so can't be sure. Take a look at the output and see if it differs from the fdisk output or post it here. Windows 8 pre-installed on a computer will have a feature called 'Secure Boot' which, if my understanding is correct, needs to be disabled in order to boot a Linux installation. I would suggest to start that you use the Search function here at LQ to look for threads including "secure boot, windows 8, GPT and UEFI".

The output from fdisk seems to show only Linux partitions. I see on the link you supplied that no installation or recovery disk was supplied. Did you create a recovery disk when you intially booted windows 8?

I didn't even know Fedora had a Network install. That looks like a live CD, so do that display as "parted -l" (as root/sudo).

Hopefully you purchased a system that had Win8 installed, rather than as "Certified for Win8". That way you won't be hampered by the SecureBoot stupidity.
I'd be concerned you did a "full disk" install (the default I think these days), which wipes everything, and reformats the disk as gpt.
I hope I'm wrong.

I think you are wrong. I specifically set up the partitions in such a way that nothing from my Windows installation got erased. Plus, I can still see the Windows partitions in the Fedora file browser and in GParted. Here's the GParted output:

And no, I didn't create a recovery disk when I first booted Windows. I didn't have any blank DVDs to burn the image to, so I never created the backup disk. I wish I had now, but hindsight is 20/20 they say. Is there any hope for this situation or did I royally bone myself?

-Ben

Glad to hear it - always happy to be proved wrong in such a case.

Looks o.k. to me, although I haven't done any testing on gpt. Keep saying I should get around to it ...
Grub2 would have (probably) created that bios_grub partition for its core.img.
@yancek may be correct - do you have a secureboot option in the BIOS - as in, can you turn it off ?. That way you'll be able to see if the BIOS will boot Fedora o.k.

Other than I can't help - lack of experience with this.

I tried to make windows recovery disks when I first got my laptop. But it whined about not having CDR medium, even though I did have CDRW medium. Needless to say windows no longer exists on that machine. Nor does much else for that matter as the hard drive no longer functions and it's a 6yo+ laptop. But it's running linux off of a USB stick, with a quirky way of booting it from a grub boot cd.

From liveCD / liveDVD

# cat /proc/partitions
# sfdisk -l /dev/sda
(and whatever other devices apply)
(fdisk and cfdisk are options if sfdisk isn't there on a live linux)

On your previously listed list I only saw one partition entry for /dev/sda which probably does not bode well for you. There's a fine line when installing some distros, as install to partition and USE ENTIRE DISK is just a misclick away and the default in most cases. If you change partitioning, sometimes you have to reboot to have those changes update and become usable. There's partprobe in linux to sometimes bypass that need (part of the parted package in debian).

Your "parted -l" output above shows partitions 1-6 as windows partitions so it would appear windows is still there. I expect it has something to do with secure boot option as suggested above.

Windows is still definitely there. I'm including with this post two screeshots taken showing the file system. As you can see in these pictures, not only is the Windows partition still there, but there are also RESTORE and RECOVERY partitions as well. It would be nice if I could access these partitions, but the computer doesn't even recognize that the hard drive is there anymore. I tried disabling the Secure Boot by using the option in the BIOS. Secure Boot is turned off, but I still can't get the computer to boot from the hard drive. I even tried setting up the boot option manually. I don't have any idea how to properly do that, so it was no surprise to me when it didn't work. I set up the boot option to point to "/dev/sda" and it did nothing. It was worth a shot. In any case, if anyone has any other ideas, I'm willing to try anything to get my computer working again.

-Ben

You might boot up the Fedora CD and go to the site below. Read the instructions in the link in the Description box, download it, run it and post the output here. It will give details on your boot files and hopefully someone familiar with EFI and Secure boot will be able to help.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

You should have a small FAT partition with structure /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi. This is what Windows will be using to boot from. Can you check that you have that? Is there a similar set up in the recovery partition?

I do indeed have a small FAT partition, though it is hidden so I cannot access it. It is listed in my "parted" lists and I see it listed when I use fdisk, so I'm assuming that this is the partition you speak of. I checked my recovery partition, and the folder was there just like you said. What's the next step?

I also downloaded and ran that program that you guys pointed out to me and I'll post the results below. You may notice a difference between the earlier lists and this one. The "bios_grub" partition is no longer there. I think I may have accidentally erased it while trying to fix the problem myself. It's not there, yet it hasn't made the slightest impact on my computer. It still does the same thing.

One other thing. I tried to fix the computer by paying Microsoft for a Windows 8 disc image, which I burned to DVD and tried to run the repair programs. The repair function doesn't work, generates an error, and none of the recovery or rescue options work. So I tried to use it to do a fresh install of Windows, but it also generated an error and told me the product key I was trying to use was invalid, even though I hadn't entered a product key yet. I only pushed the INSTALL button. Very strange.

In any case, when I have the new Windows DVD in the disc drive and don't allow it to boot to Windows Setup, it allows the GRUB loader to load normally, which allows me to get into my Linux installation without the use of Live Media. This is an improvement, but I still can't boot my Windows from it, even though the option is there. When I select Windows or the Windows rescue option in GRUB, the screen goes black like it looks like it wants to load, then it generates an error that it's missing a file called "BOOT\BCD". The weird thing is that I have that file. The BOOT folder is located on the Windows partition, and there are several files like BCD, BCD.LOG, BCD.LOG1, etc. located in the folder.

Anyway, if anyone can do something with this information, I would be eternally grateful. You'll find below the results of "bootinfoscript". Thanks!

So sda1 is supposed to be your efi boot partition and contains the file /efi/Boot/bootx64.efi which is supposed to boot windows. I assume you have a similar file in sda2, the recovery partition.

I don't know why you cannot access sda1. Just su to root and create a mount point

and mount the partition there with

and you should be able inspect it but you have have to do this all as root.

What I am considering here is the possibility that /efi/Boot/bootx64.efi in sda1 has been messed up or replaced by something else.

On my system which is a Windows 7 dual boot there is an identical file to /efi/Boot/bootx64.efi which is /efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi and I assume that this is some sort of backup.

Secure boot, how ugly.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/09/u...or-secure-boot

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Secureboot

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/g...e-win-8-a.html

It looks like you need a special version of grub called grub-efi (v1.99?) or a special lilo called elilo to do this booting thing now. If that's not your point of departure you're probably wasting a lot of time. As in I hope you didn't install a linux version that's more than six months old.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting