I'll start by saying I tried everything I found. And still nothing worked.  Preface  I've converted my old MBR to GPT partition table. I actually thought I'll just have to reinstall GRUB2 and eventually Windows and it'll be fine. It wasn't. I used gdisk(GPT fdisk) to do the conversion without data loss.  Problem  At first, my Windows wouldn't load. Then, I'd do repair of BCD, where the problem was, and ended up not being able to boot to HDD at all and stuck at grub rescue screen. Tried full repair, and every other repair I run into, same thing. When I reinstall/repair GRUB, I get BCD error at windows boot.  Solutions and further problems  The most obvious one - reinstall Windows. Well, not gonna happen. It won't install on GPT without UEFI hardware. Protecting me from myself, so Microsoft-style. I made a terrible mistake and didn't realize the problem was at the partition TABLE, and not the partition itself, and formatted Windows partition. I didn't lose anything important - well, except Windows.  Next thing I tried was hybrid-MBR. I guess no one told Windows installer that, since it gives the same error(tried windows 7 and 8 both 64-bit). I used gdisk recovery menu for that, and went through all the inputs, and finished working properly.  Next was the attempt of DUET installation. Where I expected it to fail boot, due to my AMD CPU, it didn't even manage to install. I used duet-install script which I downloaded together with the files . The script stops always at the same spot:  Partition starts at sector 2048. And I've looked at the script's source, it should soon print out next line(it printed 13 lines in a moment), but nothing happens, for hours. Tried re-running, re-downloading, running from live CD, and nothing. Here's the whole output:     Will install SYSLINUX to the MBR Path to SYSLINUX is   /usr/share/syslinux       Path to bootduet is   /home/ubuntu/Downloads/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds-tianocore_uefi_duet_installer/BootSector      Path to UEFI DUET is   /home/ubuntu/Downloads/tianocore_uefi_duet_builds-tianocore_uefi_duet_installer      Will install UEFI version UDK Target partition is /dev/sda1       Will   create a FAT filesystem called 'ESP' on the target partition      Target disk (for storing MBR boot code) is /dev/sda Partition number   is 1       Partition starts at sector 2048   [edit] Tried installing XP, but it can't format the unformatted space. I tried formatting it with GParted to ntfs, but installation still registers it as unformatted space(and nothing else except it). But to be completely honest - that cd was shelved for a long time, I barely found it, and I have no idea is it x64(probably isn't so not gonna work).  So, I'm stuck now. Help please?  Also, reformatting whole HDD isn't an option. Windows isn't worth it, I'd rather stay with Linux. Also, conversion back to MBR neither, since as far as I read, it includes formatting. Also, I got 7(or 8?) partitions(5 on old MBR, but I used extended partitions... was messy).  Specs  MoBo: ASUS M5A78l-M LX CPU: AMD Athlon II x3 450  Current Workaround (well, except the obious(linux))  I got windows 8 installation to start in VirtualBox. It's some progress, but I don't want to be stuck with VM every time I  want to launch Windows.  Edits  I've played around with a duet-install script. If I type some letter and hit enter, it prints parted: invalid token: [letter]. If that letter is 'c', it prints Unknown partition table type ! Aborting!, which is obviously not the case. I guess I'll have to analyze the source deeper to get to the root of problem, because that script is the best solution to me now.  Got to the point where script stops executing: ptLine=parted "${targetDisk}" print | grep "Partition Table"`. Will try to find a solution by skiping checks and set values to match my system.  I have edited the script, and removed the part that didn't work, and finally manage to install DUET. Or at least it said so... I notice no changes to BIOS, it's all like on beginning. Still won't work.
30484
I'd like to know if there's a method to get Windows 7 or Windows 8 Developer Preview to install to a GPT disk on my traditional IBM PC BIOS setup. Windows 7, of course, rejects my GPT partition, because I don't have UEFI. Well, Debian and Grub 2 seem to work fine... So I want to know if there's a way to force Windows to work as well.  I'd seriously prefer avoiding hybrid MBR/GPT, because it's quite fragile and feels hackish, but it does work. I would assume the main blocker is that Microsoft is simply not adding support in their BIOS bootloader for GPT, which is understandable, I suppose. Is there any recourse?  The way I see it, there are a few potential solutions:   Having an alternate bootloader for the Windows kernel. NOT a chainloader. As far as I know, none exist. That's a shame. Storing as little as possible on an alternate MBR-based disk. Not liking this idea, but it's doable. I'm not sure I'd call this a solution to the problem as much as a workaround. Emulating EFI enough to get the EFI bootloader to work... I remember hearing a bit about a UEFI-on-BIOS emulator, but I can't find anything about it now. I assume this is doable, but there's probably not much demand for it yet, and it's probably no fun at all to setup. GRUB 2 seems to be able to boot a hackintosh with necessary EFI emulation, but I guess there's no interest/UEFI 2 is harder to approach (and I would assume other EFI emulators used for hackintosh are on the same boat.) Coreboot with TainoCore. Coreboot does not work on my motherboard (as far as I know,) and I'm quite sure the last effort to do this during GSoC was a failure. I'd absolutely love this solution, if it did work, though.   Am I missing anything?
29713
When the bootloader (GRUB) is broken, I cannot access neither Ubuntu nor Windows.  I heard that an easy solution to fix this is to use the Boot-Repair tool from an Ubuntu liveCD (or liveUSB).  What are the steps to do this?
115047
So i'm trying to install Ubuntu on my laptop, it seems to work fine until it tries to install grub. I haven't seen progress the past hour and this is the second attempt.  I'm trying to install 13.10, using a Linux Live USB. I don't care about the contents of the laptop.   I've been trying to find instructions about installing grub before starting the installation, hoping that would solve my issues, but I came up empty.  Laptop is 2 years old, it used to run dual-boot windows 7 and Ubuntu. I'm now doing a fresh install of just Ubuntu.  I hope anyone knows how I can find out why it is happening.
73980
This is NOT an installation problem question. I've had both op sys working fine side-by-side for a couple of weeks now. I'm using Ubunutu 12.04 64-bit.  This morning when I tried to switch from Win8 to Ubuntu, it just rebooted into Win8. No grub screen whatsoever. This is the 3rd machine I've had dual-booting &amp; have never seen this, but then Win8 is a 1st for me &amp; has thrown some pretty awesome blocks in the path to get to here. Atrocious op sys...  I'm assuming the ASUS updater did this yesterday. (ASUS R503U)  So, do I just put the Ubuntu disk in &amp; reinstall grub?
100687
So i want to install Ubuntu and im booting from USB. Im new to Ubuntu.  When i click SOMETHING ELSE, it shows 4 partions: the first of 1mb, sda1, unknown free space, second of 100mb sda2 (that i know its system recovery from win7), third is 170gb (win7) sda3, and the last one is like 830gb, i dont know where this came from.... on windows i have them separated.  is this a bug or something? How to install without losing all my data and keeping Win7?  When i try without installing i get to see my 3 partions (170gb, 600gb, 230gb) but not when i try to install.  Edit  ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo gdisk -l /dev/sda   outputs this:  GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.7   Partition table scan:   MBR: MBR only   BSD: not present   APM: not present   GPT: not present   *************************************************************** Found invalid GPT and valid MBR; converting MBR to GPT format in memory.  ***************************************************************  Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB Logical sector size: 512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): 2729AEE7-A594-4A07-91DF-96116B581067 Partition table holds up to 128 entries First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134 Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries Total free space is 2044 sectors (1022.0 KiB)  Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name    1              63            2047   992.5 KiB   4200  Windows LDM data    2            2048          206847   100.0 MiB   4200  Windows LDM data    3          206848       245762047   117.1 GiB   4200  Windows LDM data    4       245762048      1953523119   814.3 GiB   4200  Windows LDM data   And,  ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l   outputs this:  Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x13344b63     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1              63        2047         992+  42  SFS Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary. /dev/sda2   *        2048      206847      102400   42  SFS /dev/sda3          206848   245762047   122777600   42  SFS /dev/sda4       245762048  1953523119   853880536   42  SFS
106404
I'm trying to setup and install Ubuntu on a RAID 1 setup. I have two disks, sdb and sdc. I've been following this guide  which more or less works for getting everything set up and Ubuntu installed. The problem is at the end of the installation, it tries to install GRUB. By default it tries my &quot;first disk&quot;, which gives a &quot;fatal error&quot;. I've tried installing it on a specific partion, e.g. sdb1 as well as RAID devices, e.g. md0, md1, etc.. Nothing seems to work. The actual error is  Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sdb Executing 'grub-install '/dev/sdb' failed. This is a fatal error.  Then I'm taken back to the main install menu. If I choose &quot;Install the GRUB boot loader on a hard disk&quot; option, I can pick the partition, but entering sdb2 or md1 gives the same error. So I went ahead an just didn't install GRUB, which means now I presumably have a working Ubuntu installation, but I can't boot it. I've tried booting from the LiveCD to install GRUB, but I can't chroot into my system because it doesn't seem to recognize that my disk is a Linux disk. There's an error about it being a RAID partition. So basically I would really like to know how you know to which device to install GRUB at installation, or at the very least, how to install it on to my system now. I suppose I should also mention that sda is a Windows 7 installation that I would like to keep around and be able to access at boot. Thanks for any help.
33669
It looks like  isn't possible with UEFI, where as with MBR there wasn't a big difference between external and internal. Is that true or is it still possible?  Is it even possible to combine both boot methods?
44652
I'm a new Linux user. I've reinstalled my Wubi from scratch at least ten times the last few weeks because while getting the system up and running (drivers, , etc.) I've broken something (X, grub, unknowns) and I can't get it back to work. Especially for a newbie like me, it's easier (and much faster) to just reinstall the whole shebang than try to troubleshoot several layers of failed &quot;fixing&quot; attempts. Coming from Windows, I expect that there is some &quot;disk image&quot; utility that I can run to make a snapshot of my Linux install (and of the boot partition!!) before I meddle with stuff. Then, after I've foobar'ed my machine, I would somehow restore my machine back to that working snapshot. What's the Linux equivalent of Windows disk imagers like  or ?  Note: I found a similar question:
30342
After I ran Windows 10 update this afternoon my partition table broke... I had dual boot with Windows 10 and Ubuntu 14 with Grub as the boot loader. The error that came up was "Error no such partition, Entering rescue mode... grub rescue>". I googled it,  about the boot-repair ISO, installed it on a USB, ran the repair, got this report, but still no luck:    Now the boot skips Grub entirely and goes to Windows boot manager which fails with "The boot configuration data for your PC is missing or contains errors". So now instead of dual boot I have zero boot. Thanks Microsoft.  Anyway can you guys help me interpret the disk info in the pastebin link? I don't remember my partition configuration but I believe Ubunut had slightlty less disk space than Windows. Questions I have:   Is the Ubuntu partition still there? Could it be the one named "Extended"? (sda4) Where would GRUB be? Gone? Can it be reinstalled? how?   I don't really care about the Windows partition anymore, but it would be nice to rescue Ubuntu.
114080
Sony Vaio laptop with Windows 7 Home will not load Windows; automatically goes into startup repair then fails. Unfortunately, there are no restore points and the owner did not create the recovery disks when they purchased the laptop. I have tried the typical things to repair without success; F8 startup options fail (no recovery option available), startup repair fails, repair CD made from a good system fails, booted to another Windows 7 disk fails because its not the same version, CHKDSK, SFC scan, etc.  From a command prompt I can see the recovery partition and it appears to be intact. Is there a way to create the system recovery disks from the recovery partition when Windows will not load?  This unit was purchased at Walmart. The model number is PCG-61611L. Sony's site requires an additional model number to access info. This number is not located on the outside of laptop. Sony indicates there is a text file within Windows which contains this number. Thus far, have not been able to find the file.   F10 and F11 during boot did not work. It appeared F10 tried but all that happened was a row of multi colored pixels across the screen and it froze there.   Saw another post about using gParted to access the drive and change the recovery partition to /boot. Did that and it went farther than before. If successful I will post all the details in case someone else runs into this.   Edit: Found the recovery partition needs to be hidden in order for F10 to work. All that happens when F10 is pressed at startup is it comes to a DOS style boot configuration screen. There are no options for recovery. F11 does nothing. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion the recovery partition may look intact when in actuality it is not functional. The owner will have to purchase recovery disk(s) from Sony since they did not make the recovery disks when prompted.
81528
I've been trying to replace my current Windows 10 installation with Ubuntu 16.04. My computer is a Lenovo Thinkpad T470. I've formatted my 15GB USB-dongle. Downloaded the software Rufus, and burned the ISO onto the USB. I've tried the settings "MBR Partition for BIOS or UEFI", "MBR Partition for UEFI" and "GPT partition for UEFI". I've tried using memtest86+ to test if I have any memory errors, I have not. I've tried disabling Secure boot, and Fast startup. I've tried using other software than Rufus, and I've tried entering the "nomodeset" in the boot options, as well "acpi=off", nothing works.   When I boot from my USB. I choose "Install Ubuntu" from the grub menu. And then select my language in the installer. It is from this point on, it gets problematic. Sometimes when I try to connect to my WIFI, it connects successfully, but when I press the "continue" button, the installer freezes and nothing happens. Sometimes I get past this point, but it then freezes later on in the installation progress - typically right when I press the "Install now" button.   It should also be mentioned that, if I press the "Quit" button in the install. I get to a black screen with a lot of text saying something like squashfs error.   Can someone please help me? When I tried booting memtest86+ it only worked when I changed my boot mode from UEFI to Legacy. Could this be it? Are there any downsides to installing an operating system in legacy?   If anyone has any other suggestions, it would be greatly appreciated!  Thank you :-)
24249
Story:  Yesterday I wanted to make my Ubuntu partition bigger so I ran Windows (Dual boot) and decreased size of my D drive size. It wanted me to reboot computer, when it was starting up it done everything and rebooted once again. Then I saw grub rescue with "no filesystem" or something like that. I ran Ubuntu live CD to fix that and it is now working.  Problem:  Problem is when I want to add unallocated part of HDD to my Ubuntu partition I can't, because GParted thinks whole disk is unallocated! I tried fixing filesystem by: fsck /dev/sda5 -f -r, but I think that's not it (or I'm doing it wrong way). I have also tried chkdsk from Windows Installation CD, but it didn't fix anything. Also, both of systems are working.  Is it just GParted problem, or maybe HDD is bad for real? If so, how to fix it?  fdisk -l can see partitions:  root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# fdisk -l  Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 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: 0xa118d672     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1   *        2048      206847      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda2          206848   286719999   143256576    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda3       286720000   811972349   262626175    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT /dev/sda4       915726335   976771071    30522368+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda5       915726336   968652799    26463232   83  Linux /dev/sda6       968652800   976771071     4059136   82  Linux swap / Solaris   Images:
57880
I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit) operating system. It supports uefi so I installed it like a normal dual booting now (not like Wubi).  When I try to load Windows 8 it works fine. But when I try to run Ubuntu, I get the following error:  ubuntu winboot wubildr.mbr missing   How to fix the Ubuntu boot-loading issue?  UPDATE: I have tried bootinfoscript on my lap and this is the URL:
71866
Yesterday, I tried to dualboot Ubuntu 16.04 onto my hard drive, creating a new partition for Ubuntu alongside my existing Windows 8. First, I disabled the fast-boot option in Windows 8, and still GRUB did not load, and it went directly to Windows boot-up. Then I did some research and found this article:     Basically, I issued the BCDEdit command in Windows, and entered in the following code:  bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi   When I reboot, I get a basic GRUB2 terminal, and after I type in the exit command, then a second Shell prompt appears, and after typing the exit command again, the GRUB2 menu to select the OS to boot finally appears... with only Ubuntu and Ubuntu memory test as options, not Windows 8.  After booting into Ubuntu, I tried to run the Boot-repair Utility, but that shows this following error:   How do I approach this problem? The Pastebin log is here:   Thanks for the help!
81506
I recently installed a Linux operating  system (backtrack 5 r3) I couldn't connect to the internet with it so I removed the partition manually. After that, whenever I turn on my computer it goes to a command line that says "error no File-system found" "Grub Rescue/"  I have tried f12 and booted into all the options. I also put Ubuntu 12.04 on my flash drive and tried installing it on the computer, the installation failed saying "No Available Space"  My hard-drive is 500g with about 250 left. I put the hard drive in another computer (as a secondary just to see the files. It had 2 partitions a main and one with 1 gig. I formatted it with no difference.  My Problem: I can't boot into Windows
45762
I have finally installed Ubuntu on my second drive. When I start my computer GRUB only offers me to boot Ubuntu, not Windows 7. What needs to be done so that I can choose between Ubuntu and Windows in GRUB?  When I press F12 for boot menu at startup and I choose Windows Boot Manager it boots into Windows 7.    I ran command sudo fdisk -l and here is log ():  WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.   Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0xc3ffc3ff     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1               1  1953525167   976762583+  ee  GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
87439
Whenever I boot into my system, Linux directly boots. If I press shift, GRUB shows only Linux, not Windows. Here are results of fdisk and update-grub. I think I have installed Linux the wrong way.  $ fdisk WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.   Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes Disk identifier: 0x00000000     Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System /dev/sda1               1  1953525167   976762583+  ee  GPT Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.  $ update-grub Generating grub configuration file ... Warning: Setting GRUB_TIMEOUT to a non-zero value when GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT is set is no longer supported. Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-32-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.19.0-32-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin   No volume groups found done