Windows 8 update failed

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hello,

I dual boot Win 8 and opensuse (in fact I have ubuntu too but I don’t use it much). The win system is in a primary partition while the linux OS(opensuse and ubuntu) are on the extended partition.

Grub2 is installed in MBR. My last Win8 update was in July. So it seems I had a major update from MS. Today after 1GB download of windows update, the machine rebooted but later said windows 8 failed to apply the update, restoring the previous system.

I remember in the forum someone said it is needed to make the windows partition as the active partition when doing major update of windows but I don’t remember the detail. Is there an instruction somewhere for this? Thanks a lot.

2

So do you know for sure grub 2 is in the MBR? That is not the norm. As for Windows, you need a LiveDVD with GPARTED. GPARTED will allow you to select the Active/Boot partition to Windows and then back to openSUSE. If the MBR is loaded with generic boot code, changing the Active partition to Windows will cause Windows to boot and the update should work. If grub 2 is loaded in the MBR, changing the active partition will have no effect at all.

Thank You,

3

On 2013-11-17 00:26, bonedriven wrote:

> I remember in the forum someone said it is needed to make the windows
> partition as the active partition when doing major update of windows but
> I don’t remember the detail. Is there an instruction somewhere for this?
> Thanks a lot.

Mmm. Guessing.

You have to start YaST, boot loader section, check write generic code on
MBR, install MBR on root partition (or perhaps extended), mark that
partition as bootable…

When all that works, you can change the bootable mark back to the
windows boot partition. If it boots, try the windows upgrade.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

4

I would first select “Do not install bootloader”, confirmed and exited yast; then started yast bootloader again, selected grub2 as bootloader with above setting. For all I can tell, yast bootloader applies changes in bootloader location only the very first time it is called.

5

On 2013-11-17 05:26, arvidjaar wrote:
>
> robin_listas;2598262 Wrote:
>>
>> Mmm. Guessing.
>>
>> You have to start YaST, boot loader section, check write generic code on
>> MBR, install MBR on root partition (or perhaps extended), mark that
>> partition as bootable…
>
> I would first select “Do not install bootloader”, confirmed and exited
> yast; then started yast bootloader again, selected grub2 as bootloader
> with above setting. For all I can tell, yast bootloader applies changes
> in bootloader location only the very first time it is called.

Dunno.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

6

Sorry I don’t understand. It seems the boot flag is already on the windows partition.

1290×529 52.2 KB

7

On 2013-11-17 21:06, bonedriven wrote:

> Sorry I don’t understand. It seems the boot flag is already on the
> windows partition.

Because I told you above that if you change grub to another partition,
and put generic MBR code, the boot mark has to go to that partition, too.

For booting Windows during a SP install, you change the bootmark to the
Windows partition, which disables Grub in that setup.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

8

Originally Posted by robin_listas https://forums.opensuse.org/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png](https://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/install-boot-login/492086-windows-8-update-failed.html#post2598262)
Mmm. Guessing.

You have to start YaST, boot loader section, check write generic code on
MBR, install MBR on root partition (or perhaps extended), mark that
partition as bootable…

How do I do the “do not install bootloader” thing?

I just "checked the write generic code on MBR, install MBR(grub2) on extended partition, marked the extended partition as bootable. I restarted and found everything as normal. So I booted my portable opensuse and started Gparted and flag C:windows as bootable and start my laptop again. I don’t see anything changed as I still booted to grub2 but I don’t know if it should be like this. I chose to boot windows 8 and did the update (took more than 1 hour to finish the update)

Then it still told me windows failed to update, restoring system, which took another half hour to finish.

Hope someone can give a noob friendly instruction, as this operation takes a hell lot of a time (about 2 hours). Fortunately, my laptop can still run as usual for the moment. I don’t know how to install MBR on root partition/extended partition. I just installed grub2 on the extended partition.

9

On 2013-11-18 20:56, bonedriven wrote:

> I just "checked the write generic code on MBR, install MBR(grub2) on
> extended partition, marked the extended partition as bootable. I
> restarted and found everything as normal. So I booted my portable
> opensuse and started Gparted and flag C:windows as bootable and start my
> laptop again. I don’t see anything changed as I still booted to grub2

Then the changes were not applied. You don’t have a generic MBR.

> Hope someone can give a noob friendly instruction, as this operation
> takes a hell lot of a time (about 2 hours). Fortunately, my laptop can
> still run as usual for the moment. I don’t know how to install MBR on
> root partition/extended partition. I just installed grub2 on the
> extended partition.

I’m sorry… I’m not very good at detailed instructions for novices, I
tend to assume you know something or the other and confuse people.

Ok, I’ll try.

Hum… I was going to use my 11.4 laptop, which has a similar
installation to yours, but it doesn’t have grub 2. I’ll have to make do
with a different system.

Yast, bootloader module.

From your partition layout, root is sda5.
Thus, on first screen, displaying grub2, mark only “boot from extended
partition”.

On bootloader options:

mark set active flag in partition table
write generic boot code to MBR

And then press [OK] to apply.

It should boot. If you then change the boot mark to only sda1, then it
should boot directly windows without grub.

Warning: the generic boot code might not be exactly the same code as
what Windows wrote. It is possible that this difference would also make
the windows update to fail. I’m not sure of this.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

10

I have a blog post on installing openSUSE on an external hard drive, but shows the screen where you select write generic boot code and how to get to it and so it might be helpful to you:

https://forums.opensuse.org/blogs/jdmcdaniel3/installing-opensuse-13-1-onto-external-hard-drive-150/

Thank You,

11

On 2013-11-18 21:23, Carlos E. R. wrote:

> Warning: the generic boot code might not be exactly the same code as
> what Windows wrote. It is possible that this difference would also make
> the windows update to fail. I’m not sure of this.

This code might be saved on “/boot/backup_mbr” (check the date), so it
could be picked from there. However, it also contains the partition
table, so overwriting mbr with this backup would destroy your current
partition layout. There is a method to do it with dd, but I would
hesitate a lot to apply it.

It could perhaps be restored from a Windows rescue disk. But I’m not
familiar with the current incantation: years ago, it was something like
“fdisk -fixmbr”.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)

12

If it is an update to Win 8.1 (sounds like it) do you have enough free space? The 8.1 update download is 6 gig have no idea how much it needs for the install itself.

13

I do not currently have access to any openSUSE system, but in yast bootloader module there is selection of bootloader (grub, grub2, etc). In this list there is also “Do not install bootloader” or similar.

14

Thank you for the detail. But I’m afraid I in fact did exactly what you said above. When you say change the flag to windows partition again, do you mean to do it with a live OS with Departed?

The only difference is that when I change the boot flag to windows, I still boot to grub2 just like nothing has changed.

I don’t know if it’s related, but my grub2 was restored by a ubuntu tool once, which I believe has installed grub2 on MBR. While before, grub2 was only installed on the extended partition.

15

On 2013-11-19 20:46, bonedriven wrote:

> Thank you for the detail. But I’m afraid I in fact did exactly what you
> said above. When you say change the flag to windows partition again, do
> you mean to do it with a live OS with Departed?

With anything. Windows, openSUSE, any live… You can do it in openSUSE
and reboot.

> The only difference is that when I change the boot flag to windows, I
> still boot to grub2 just like nothing has changed.

and it is true, the MBR has not changed, it is still grub. I’m unsure
how to repair that. Best from Windows, but I don’t know the incantation.
Or not remember.

> I don’t know if it’s related, but my grub2 was restored by a ubuntu tool
> once, which I believe has installed grub2 on MBR. While before, grub2
> was only installed on the extended partition.

Makes sense. I think openSUSE defaults to that.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 12.3 x86_64 “Dartmouth” at Telcontar)