I have a problem with Grub 2. when i hit the Windows 7 (loader) option on the Grub boot screen Windows won't boot. i get a black screen with a white cursor blinking…
Here is a log of my Boot options. I just want to delete all the other partitions which i don't know how they 've been made and stay just with the Ubuntu ext4 partition, the swap partition and the WIndows 7 partition. Can someoune help me with my problem?
Here is the log:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/1014619/
ps: I can only boot Windows with Hiren's Boot CD with the first option, Boot form first hard drive (win7, xp, vista).
Best Answer
Update Responding to Comments dated June 03 (quoted below)
Have you tried
sudo rm -r
?Note: Be VERY careful when using this command. If you do not provide the exact name of the directory you wish to delete you can can damange your installation!
Correct me if you are referring to something else, but I believe you are talking about the excerpt below from your BootInfo summary.
This does not imply that Windows XP is installed. If that was the case you would see information following
Operating System:
and/orBoot files:
. TheWindows XP: NTFS
above describes the content of theBoot sector
of the/dev/sdb1
partition.In addition to the boot loader found in sector 0 of a hard drive (i.e. the Master Boot Record), each partition can, and usually does, also contain boot loader code. Depending on who is talking about it, this can be referred to as either the
Volume Boot Record
(VBR, Microsoft or IBM) or thePartition Boot Record
(PBR, GRUB).The VBR/PBR is essentially "raw" binary code in a reserved area at the beginning of the partition. It is not part of the file system and can not be accessed (easily) from within either Windows or Ubuntu.
What you are seeing was probably placed there when the partition was first created and has not been touched since. My advice is to just ignore it.
Update Responding to Comments dated May 31 (quoted below)
I am glad it is working correctly again for you. I did not expect that you would just get a slightly more usable error message from using GRUB's
ntldr
to loadbootmgr
, but it sort of makes sense in hindsight. Perhaps that could be a useful problem isolation technique in the future?Your BootInfo summary shows the following partitions for your 500 GB hard drive,
/dev/sda
Looking at the last column on the right, you'll see that the content of
sda2
is described asExtended
. This indicates thatsda2
is an extended partition as opposed to a primary partition.For historical reasons, a hard drive which uses a Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table has only four "slots" in the MBR (sector 0) for partitions. Primary partitions are simply the partitions which are defined in one of the four entries available for partitions in sector 0 of a hard drive.
A consequence of this restriction is that a hard drive can only be partitioned using four or less primary partitions. If you need to have more partitions than just the four which can fit into the MBR then a "trick" is used. The disk is partitioned as three primary partitions plus a special primary partition which is referred to as an extended partition.
Think of the extended partition as a (primary) partition where the space in the partition is sub-divided into other partitions rather than using it all for a single file system (such as
ext4
orNTFS
). The partitions inside an extended partition (i.e.sda5
andsda6
) are referred to as logical partitions.The existance of the extended partition in one of the "slots" in the MBR is how the space used by all of the logical partitions is marked as "in use" and thus unavailable. And that is why you cannot delete
sda2
.If you could delete it from the MBR partition table in sector 0, then the portion of your hard drive used by
sda5
andsda6
would be considered "unallocated". The data in the logical partitions could be overwritten, erasing your files.Before you can delete
sda2
you would first have to empty it by deleting all of the logical partitions it contains. That is, you would have to deletesda5
andsda6
which are inside of the extended partitionsda2
. Since that would delete your Ubuntu install you obviously do not want to do that.You do not see that partition because it is marked as a "hidden" partition. Here is the partition table for
/dev/sdb
from your BootInfo summary. OSselector is the (hidden) FAT16 logical partitionsdb5
which is inside the extended partitionsdb2
.I think you would be able to "see" this partition using
gparted
. You could also clear the "hidden" flag which would allow it to be seen and mounted in Ubuntu and Windows. You could then see what files are in this partition.Note: While
gparted
is included on the Live CD or USB, it is not included when Ubuntu is installed. To usegparted
with the Ubuntu installed on your drive you would need to first install it using this command:sudo apt-get install gparted
(You could probably also use the Ubuntu Software Center GUI to install it.)I actually do not know anything about BURG so I may not be the best one to give advice about this. But from what I could see in your BootInfo summary, BURG is not currently being used for anything.
The files for it are still in
/boot/burg
and this is what the BootInfo summary detected. But it is GRUB's boot record in the MBR which loads GRUB'score.img
which in turn loads GRUB from/boot/grub
.I think you could simply delete the directory
/boot/burg
. It would probably be better though to simply rename the directory to something else as a test first. If you don't run into any problems after renaming/boot/burg
to, say,/boot/hidden-burg
then I expect it would be safe to delete that directory.Original Post
I do not see a problem with the GRUB configuration. (Of course, it could still be there and I just am not seeing it.)
The problem may be with your windows boot configuration. You might try installing the (free for non-commercial use) windows utility Easy BCD and verify that the contents of your Windows BCD file is correct. (Scroll to the bottom of the page and select the Register button. You do not need to provide a name or an email to download EasyBCD.)
When did this problem booting Windows via GRUB appear? Do you remember what change you made that may have caused this?
You could also try the following just to verify that you are using the correct
grub.cfg
file and that the Windows Partition (aka Volume) Boot Record (PBR/VBR) has not been corrupted.Windows 7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)
Press e to edit the entry's GRUB commands. You should see the commands below.
Edit the commands as shown below to use GRUB's
ntldr
instead of thechainloader
command. Note: Changes made to the GRUB boot menu this way are not persistant. They apply only to the next boot. Thegrub.cfg
is not changed.Two changes were made to the commands in (3) versus (4).
While still viewing the edited commands list, press either Ctrl+X or F10 to boot using these edited commands and see if this changes anything.