Hot answers tagged mbr
12
Yes, sure.
$ dd if=/dev/sda of=mbr bs=512 count=1
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes (512 B) copied, 0.000188571 s, 2.7 MB/s
$ ls -l mbr
-rw-r--r-- 1 max max 512 2011-02-12 18:25 mbr
$ hd mbr
00000000 eb 48 90 d0 bc 00 7c 8e c0 8e d8 be 00 7c bf 00 |.H....|......|..|
00000010 06 b9 00 02 fc f3 a4 50 68 1c 06 cb fb b9 04 00 |.......Ph.......|
...
9
In your case, the correct selection is /dev/sda, the first one. It's the first and only hard disk in your system, whereas /dev/sda1 is a partition on that hard disk. You can install grub on a partition, but it's a "BAD idea".
If you had multiple hard drives and paritions, first find out where your root partition is:
df | grep /$
You can then install grub ...
5
Use fdisk. Put it into sector mode with the u command, then p to print the table, d to delete the partition, and then n to recreate it. When you recreate it, use the same starting sector, but an ending sector that actually fits within the disk. When you are done and have double checked ( p again ), save and quit with w.
4
Install the MBR to the disk with Ubuntu on it and configure the BIOS to boot from Ubuntu's disk instead of the Win7 one.
Since you cannot boot into Ubuntu, you'll need the Live CD to boot and repair things.
Boot from the Live CD.
Mount the partition containing the Ubuntu installation (by opening it in the file browser for example)
Open a Terminal
Run the ...
4
Could you create a Bootinfo Summary report using the boot-repair tool as described below and then post the link to the report?
I know you have already provided some details about your boot configuration. However, the report I am asking for contains more detailed information and might give us a better understanding of why you are unable to boot Windows ...
4
I'm the author of gdisk, and I agree with what psusi has written, with the caveat that I can't know what's really on /dev/sda5, so I can't say if it's safe to remove it. If it's the stuff that you've burned to your recovery DVDs, it should be safe to delete it, though.
If there's sufficient free space on /dev/sda5 (about 17 KiB), you should be able to ...
3
Yes, it does look like a typical MBR error message. I ended up with a similar situation, although I was able to reinstall grub from a liveCD and then boot into Ubuntu well enough. (I don't know if your boot repair program reinstalls grub; if not, I'll post the instructions below. I can't take credit for them, but I don't know any longer where I got them.) ...
3
If you had really important files in your Vista partition, then stop doing anything. If you had erased your files, each time that you write to you're disk recovery will be harder. Go to some professional that can help you to recover the files.
If the files are not so important, i.e. you don't want to pay to recover them, the first thing to do is to know ...
2
If you want to boot an ISO file in an easy fashion you normally use a tool like unetbootin or others availiable at the http://www.pendrivelinux.com/ web site.
If you want to boot just ISO files specifically you could set up grub2 on a flash drive and use the 'boot iso feature' of grub2. The issue with this method is each disrto seems to have its own ...
2
You can use open-source tool: TestDisk to repair the corrupt partition table.
Example of repair a damaged partition table:
http://geekyprojects.com/storage/how-to-repair-a-damaged-partition-table-or-mbr/
2
I got the same error message. The installation configuration that led to this message is as follows:
/dev/sda1 ntfs :windows partition
/dev/sda2 ntfs :windows partition
/dev/sda3 ntfs :windows partition
/dev/sda5 :swap partition
/dev/sda6 ext4 :/ partition
/dev/sda7 ext4 :/home partition
/dev/sda8 ...
2
It looks like none of your partitions on /dev/sda have bootable flag set - compare the fdisk -l output with /dev/sdb - see the star in the Boot column next to /dev/sdb1? You need to set it on /dev/sda1
To set bootable flag, start fdisk with
fdisk /dev/sda
(from your LiveCD, as root). There, press "a" and then enter "1". then press "w" to write your ...
2
Well, you can use a LiveCD to re-install GRUB so I recommend that you download the LiveCD. This thread, this thread and this thread might be useful to you. Look for the section explaining how to re-install GRUB2 in the first thread. (Also LiveCD is useful when you want to recover data.)
2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1639198 by following the instructions on that page I was able to install lilo.
Lilo gives me two options ubuntu and windows. Windows works directly, choosing ubuntu brings me to grub which allows me to boot ubuntu.
Yes grub gives a warning about an invalid background colour but at least my machine is usable (or as ...
2
I never got in trouble by using these instructions:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2#Recover
First of all, you must start your system from a live cd. Then
"METHOD 3 - CHROOT
This method of installation uses the chroot command to gain access to the broken system's files. Once the chroot command is issued, the LiveCD treats the broken system's / as its own. ...
2
The problem is that you currently have two Ubuntu installations, each with their own grub.cfg, but only one grub installation. When you boot your computer, grub loads and reads the grub.cfg from OS #2. To make it so that grub reads from OS #1's grub.cfg you need to install grub from within OS #1. In addition you want to make sure that OS #2 is not configured ...
2
Boot to ubuntu.
Format your bootable partition with gparted.
In gparted set the bootable flag again to the formatted partition.
Run sudo update-grub to reinstall grub.
Explanation: As there is no mint, grub won't detect the kernel, but it will reinstall itself to mbr with ubuntu kernel.
If you messed up everything and want to correct things. Boot a live ...
2
Ok it seems that it is not a problem of MBR in my case. On a Mac there are GPT and MBR. You must use the Disk utility of Mac OSX to make all partitions because this is the only tool which is able to synchronise GPT and MBR (they are note made to work together, it is usually one of them). I think it was my problem because I succeed, even in putting grub on ...
2
This not really an "answer". The content would be a better match to a comment, but is too long-winded to fit in one. Apologies :-(
Some questions just to make sure I am reading your question correctly. (Please update/edit your question if you any further info to add.)
You say "I installed grub manually onto the hard disk (/dev/sda)."
So you have already ...
2
Have a look at this post. If you installed ubuntu using a USB, then grub may have been installed to the usb, try booting with the usb connected. If you then see grub and can boot ubuntu, follow our solution in the above link or look at this page on my website for more details.
If not you could try booting the live ubuntu disc and using boot repair.
2
For fixing GRUB, I bet Boot-Repair can fix this. It's a great tool.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
The ISO for live-USB is 356 MB. Format your USB drive and try this image perhaps? (note: the Boot-Repair ISO doesn't support systems installed with LVM, RAID or UEFI.... if that's the case just use a Ubuntu image.)
2
CALM DOWN, do not rush, do not blindly run any tools trying to fix things.
STOP using the disk. Make sure you don't write a single byte on it
If the data is really valuable, consider using professional help - there are organizations which commercially restore data on hard drives, they'll certainly do better than you
Get a hard drive bigger that the stuffed ...
2
It's an alignment thing
For performance reasons you really want your storage to be aligned on all levels. While this is probably just a simple hard drive with a partition table and a file system on it directly, it's still important to not misalign it.
What about alignment?
Suppose your hard drive works with 4 kB sectors (yours appear to work with 512 ...
2
Should work just fine. If you want to see what the 776MB are, take a look into the folder /ext4a using nautilus or a terminal. Because it is mounted it will have an entry in the file /etc/fstab. Edit it and delete the entry for /dev/sda1 respectively /ext4a.
You are also right about sda5 and sda6. sda5 is the root mount point /. That means everything that ...
2
If you have a usb thumb drive, you can use penndrivelinux from windows to make it bootable with an applicable distribution. From there you can fix it using boot-repair.
Please see:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
1
The 0x42 ("42" under the "Id" column in your fdisk output) partitions mean that your disk is using Microsoft's Logical Disk Manager (LDM), aka dynamic disks. This is a non-standard meta-partitioning scheme conceptually similar to Linux's Logical Volume Manager (LVM). Installing Linux to an LDM disk is difficult at best. Your best bet is to convert your LDM ...
1
You could always download and use Resc-a-tux.
This is a live cd with a primary goal: Restoring grub/installing grub.
It's a nice program which I used after windows just removed my grub without asking, and it worked like a charm.
Rescatux features:
Fixes GRUB and GRUB2
Regenerates Debian/Ubuntu grub menues
Check and fix filesystems
...
1
The last I heard, WUBI didn't work well on UEFI installations; however, I don't follow WUBI very closely, so that may not be accurate. If it is accurate, your best bet is to ignore any WUBI-style boot options and instead boot the Ubuntu CD/DVD directly using the firmware's boot manager (usually accessed by hitting a function key soon after you power on). You ...
1
Boot the Ubuntu LiveUSB and run the command
sudo fdisk -l
to look at the drive and partitions. If there are only two partitions on the hard drive - ext4 / and a swap partition then you have re-partitioned and formatted your hard drive. Recovery would be difficult but you could try testdisk to see if will recognise any of the old partitions and the data ...
1
This may help you, although I will profess to not being an expert in the MBR, TrueCrypt etc. : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestoreUbuntu/XP/Vista/7Bootloader
EDIT: following on from Web-E's comment, this link refers to the use of TestDisk to rebuild the partition table:
"TestDisk (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) can be used to
rebuild ...
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