Hello. I hope I will not call the wrath of everyone, but I have a small (or maybe big) problem with GRUB and GRUB2.
I have a desktop containing several HDDs, one of which is partitioned in at least 3 partitions. The first installed system was OpenSUSE 13.1 32-bit. Then I installed a copy of Windows 7 Prof. from my GF. However the serial codes didn´t match so I downloaded the right version to match with my serial code and installed that one by running the iso file from within the old Windows 7. It rewrited the mbr, naturally, and then the windows loader offerred me 2 Windows 7 to choose from. Anyway, the friend who installed OpenSUSE for me sent me the “repair GRUB after Windows” so I tried to do that but I fear I did it from the OpenSUSE running from livestick and I somehow srewed it up.
Long story short: Now when I boot up, it jumps into GRUB 0.97, from which I am able to manually go
(root hd0,0
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot)
into something I believe is GRUB2. From there, I can select Windows 7, which leads me into Windows loader which then leads me to the operating system. However doing this is really annoying, so is there any way to get rid of GRUB 0.97?
I am a noob, so sorry if I didn´t attach everything you need, will try to remedy that on request.
Looks like I pissed the mighty Tux.
I tried the repair from the page once more (going in the terminal and sudo /usr/sbin/grub then inatalling grub stage 2). It looked hopeful, yet now I somehow cannot get into windows at all. The former set of commands:
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot
now returns “Bootmgr missing, press Ctrl Alt Del to reboot”. With this instead:
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot
it gets to the graphic loader, however if Windows is selected, it only says: “GRUB loaded, hello!” (or something like that) and cycles back to the graphic loader. The only way out is to select OpenSUSE, which works. But this seems to me like a doozy.
Any ideas?
I have no idea how, but probably during some of my desperate attempts to remedy, I made the “Bootmgr missing” issue go away.
root (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 boot
now yields GRUB2 (maybe, I suppose the graphical interface for selecting system indeed is GRUB2). However it is still unable to boot Windows, it just loops back to GRUB2 if Windows is selected.
Did you recreate grub2 configuration after installing Windows? Menu entry is static and does not know anything about systems you installed after creating menu, so it may be stale.
Try running “grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg” in openSUSE.
So I remedied the most pressing issue, which was being able toboot Windows. I did that by replacing MBR with Windows-friendly one. Now it automatically boots Windows. So, should I try installing GRUB2 once again? I am kinda scared now…
One clean reinstall later, the following happens:
I installed OpenSUSE 13.1, then Win7, now I want to repair the bootloader to GRUB2.
So, I plug in the liveflash, select the OpenSUSE 13.1 LIVECD and try to do this: http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Repair_MBR_after_Windows_install
But in the step
grub2-install /dev/sda [actually by me it is /dev/sdb, sda is god knows why my Windows backup disk]
Xterm says:
/usr/sbin/grub2-bios-setup: warning: this LDM has no embedding partition; embedding won`t be possible
/usr/sbin/grub2-bios-setup: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for RAIDand LVM install
I suppose GRUB2 isn`t installed then, because when I reboot without the livestick, it shows the flashing vertical cursor and then Windows boots.
What am I supposed to do if I want the GRUB2 to give me choice between SUSE and Win?
Oh, I should mention that OpenSUSE is on sdb1 and the system files for W7 are on sdb3.
So, I went to repair it and ended up somehow screwing up the whole installation. So I formatted the whole / to ext4 and yet, this came up. Naturally, the GRUB2 wasnt installed and when I put in the livestick and select Boot from disk, it just beeps and circles back to the menu without actually booting. The only option is to launch the SUSE Live. When I try to repair GRUB2 via YaST/Bootloader and I set it to GRUB2 + Custom Boot Partition [/dev/sdb1, which is the /], I get the "/usr/sbin/grub2-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of overlayfs’."
Naturally, the GRUB2 wasnt installed and when I put in the livestick and select Boot from disk, it just beeps and circles back to the menu without actually booting. The only option is to launch the SUSE Live. When I try to repair GRUB2 via YaST/Bootloader and I set it to GRUB2 + Custom Boot Partition [/dev/sdb1, which is the /], I get the "/usr/sbin/grub2-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of overlayfs’."
Linux partitions were done by Gparted, the Win ones by Disk Management under Win 7.
Come to think of it, could it be that Win 7 turned the disk to a Dynamic is causing this trouble?
One more strange thing: Although OpenSUSE by installl recognizes existing swap at sdb2, gparted somehow disregards swap and says that sdb1 is 19 gb (15 at / and 4 at swap) and sdb2 is 100 mb ntfs formatted.
And it doesn´t seem to be UEFI. At least the Win 7 diskmgmt shows no EFI. It is too old, anyway.
And nope, MBR. But as I stated, the disk is Dynamic, not Basic.
Yes, grub2 does not support installation on dynamic disks. I do not say it is impossible in principle, just that someone with better understanding of dynamic disks need to figure out where we can write bootloader. This is also reason for your “could not write to diskfilter” error - internally grub handles dynamic disks as volume manager (with diskfilter being common name for it).
Do you have any reason to use dynamic disks at all? Could you convert back to basic disks?
Alternatively we could create grub2 image that can be safely used from within Windows loader menu. If you are willing to try it, I’ll explain how to (I actually have in mind to create script for it, but as I myself do not use Windows …)
Unless you have a really good reason you do not need dynamic disk. You should be able to convert back to NTFS. Dynamic is not compatible with anything else and is propritary thus no one ( probably even MS) knows how it works
Well, it was partitioned into 5, so Windows just turned it into dynamic . Now in order to convert it back to simple Win wants me to destroy all existing partitions and re-partition. Seems like I have to give up my dream of dual boot unless I am to totally reinstall, eh?
Maybe. I certainly hope that Windows 10 does not default to dynamic. AFAIK you simply can not mount or use a Windows partition that is dynamic format. Of course it is all a big secret and patented out the wosue so only MS can use it. If Windows will not convert back to NTFS then you are stuck. Maybe time to give MS the finger. If you have to run it for buisness then do so in a VM