Win10 Linux Dual Boot - Screw-up

455 Bravo Uniform

455 Bravo Uniform

Final Approach
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455 Bravo Uniform
Well, I shoulda left well enough alone.

Had Mint & Win7 dual boot set up for nearly 10 years. Some quirks, but no real issues.

I had to update Win7 to Win10 for newer Jepp downloader. Did so. No issues with Win10, and successfully got the newer Jepp downloader installed and got my NavData downloaded and in the plane.

Then because it’s the holidays and I can stay up as late as I want - started trying to “optimize” stuff, like decrease my Linux partition size and increase the Win10 partition. Last night I deleted Linux Mint, but also screwed up the boot loader.

I have all my files backed up, and have the Win10 boot recovery on USB, and older versions of Ubuntu, Xbubtu, Zorin, and Puppy on DVD. I tried installing Ubuntu (can’t find my Mint disk) in dual boot, but reached a “fatal error” because it couldn’t create the necessary boot loader file.

I know just enough to be dangerous (as above). Been through the Win10 recovery options I’ve seen online, no joy either.

Help?
 
We all know just enough to be dangerous...sadly. I feel your pain...I do this sort of thing to myself regularly.

Do I understand correctly that the Win 10 'recovery USB'....won't? Depending on your expertise, you could boot to a Linux (Mint is easy) USB stick, which would let you see the config files and partitions as they stand for both OS's. Might be possible to edit to a boot. Frankly, your best bet (and cleanest) is probably gonna be a re-install...sorry!

Next time, and there's always a next screw-up, something to make it easier... Use Foxclone. It's a bootable Linux-based disk/partition cloning tool. Download Foxclone to a USB stick, and clone partitions and disks to other hardware or to restorable files. When you screw up, it's a quick few clicks to restore a full OS.

Nice thing is, like this advice, it's free. I hope someone has a better plan for your current situation.

Jim
 
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What do you use each OS for? I do 99.9 % of my stuff in Ubuntu, and run Win 10 and XP in VM's for what little I need the applications.
 
Yes, the Win10 recovery won’t fix the boot issue. Trying to avoid clean install, as it was an update from Win7 with my settings. I might just wipe and start fresh.

I use the Linux to web surf and just mess with, Windows for FSX and Jepp, and have a separate hard-drive to share files.
 
You could always just dedicate the internal hard drive to Windows, and boot Linux off an external USB drive. If you have USB3.0 ports, and use an external SSD, it might actually boot faster than your internal HD.

Are you really running a 10-year-old PC? :) ....or just the dual-boot strategy?

Jim

To clarify...this wouldn't be dual boot. For normal boot to Windows, you'd just let the PC boot internally. For Linux, attach your external drive, and choose it for the temp. boot drive as BIOS fires up. Cool thing is, with modern Linux pretty much hardware independent, you could just plug it in and use it on other computers.
 
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Yeah, 10 year old motherboard, Core i5, & huge gaming case & power supply, and a bunch of other stuff plugged into it. Wanna hook up a 5.25 floppy to play with MS Space Simulator (1994).

I’m going to try to learn how to install a missing grub loader. Hopefully I don’t get myself deeper into trouble. Prolly start after everyone goes to bed. Fun stuff.

After I figure it out (I should say “if”), I’ll probably do the external drive with Linux instead.
 
I started at 11p and went to bed at 3a. My definition of fun is warped, yeah.

I tried all kinds of repairs and things. I still get:
D5EFE17F-62B1-4931-B6D2-BB1977F32018.jpeg

I get to where I can reinstall one of the more user friendly Linux distributions (like Ubuntu), and every thing goes great right until the end, like this:

3A055651-9C59-4941-855E-E7C006CE8CA5.jpeg

Windows 10 is there, Ubuntu is there, and I can’t get either one of them booted. I feel like an idiot, like I was 10 hours into instrument training (not funny).
 
Heck....you've got your data, so life is relatively good! Had a thought. There's a place on the MS site where you can download an .iso of a full copy of Win10. You could burn that to a CD and try a re-install with the option to keep your settings. Not sure if it will be happy with your Win7/10 licensing, the things you did overnight, or how much add-on stuff it will save....

Just thinkin' out loud....good luck!

Jim
 
I made enough progress to leave well enough alone. I can manually go from the “grub rescue>“ command line to the grub menu with the following lines <screen shot from someone’s YouTube vid; mine said “error: unknown file system” instead of no known partition”>:
2B196A26-604C-4DB8-92E7-410CAAAB8775.jpeg Then I can select either Xubuntu (which I newly installed after I destroyed Mint) or the Win10 (which I originally updated and was still installed). All my files and programs are still intact, thankfully. I have to type the above after each restart.

I am a few minutes and keystrokes away from fixing the grub menu to avoid typing, but I’ll take this gladly. Besides, I have to actually work next week, and I can’t guarantee I won’t jack things back up even worse.

My last failed effort just prior this was to do a clean install of Win10, but that was also effed-up because it wanted to only install it over my data hard-drive, not the OS drive; I couldn’t even reformat the OS drive with the Win install (choice was grayed out). Had that worked, I would have had to reload programs like Office, which I can’t even find my install stuff.

Happy new year! Thanks to you guys for your help!!
 
I am resurrecting this thread to see if anyone knows how to get my grub loader screen to come up on boot up automatically without having to go through all the typing of the 5 commands above.

Here is what I am trying to get to on boot up:

2F1FA1CA-DF06-4A15-9570-AE4025A905CC.jpeg

Yes, it was 2 years ago. Yes, this is low priority where I mess with it around the holidays. I shoulda flown in the 3 hours of clear skies we had and we’ll have for a while now…
 
I don’t grub frequently…but I’d start with your grub config based on the first error message. It seems to be referencing an invalid partition/disk which could be as simple as a typo and thus failing to rescue mode.
 
masloki said:
I don’t grub frequently…but I’d start with your grub config based on the first error message. It seems to be referencing an invalid partition/disk which could be as simple as a typo and thus failing to rescue mode.
Click to expand...

How do I access and change the grub configuration? :) I’ve forgotten more than I learned (yeah, negative knowledge).

I can do a search.
 
I'm guessing the Windows system broke your grub. What version Ubuntu do you have? If you still have the installation media, shut down and restart the computer with the Ubuntu media installed in the drive. It should repair the grub file.

Dual boot is a PIA.

I use Win 10 occasionally and even some legacy Win 95 programs regularly using VirtualBox on a Ubuntu 18.04 system. Works great.
 
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