[Bug 1943381] Re: what a nightmare (dual boot install Ubuntu) grub is messing up everything

[Niels Magendans]

Okay! I think I solved it, in a way I didn't expect to.

So... Everytime I have to fix the standard booting to even be able to
get into Windows. That's the order in which I do things. Then, I try
dual boot installation with Ubuntu and it failed everytime. This time,
it failed again. On the grub part and it was a fatal error again.

And I just made an assumption... "it seems to be the end of the
installation where this happens". And previously I just threw the whole
partition away again lol. Because it used to be no problem before this
stuff happened again. Because I considered the installation as probably
"completely failed", because of that.

But now, I thought... I have already tried so many things. I know where
this is going if I don't make a change. And I thought well... let's just
keep the partitions, and try to fix Grub in fact... with Ubuntu-liveUSB
and installing and running boot-repair. As if Ubuntu was installed
successfully apart from that.

So I did? Then, it did his recommendations. And then he asked me for
Pastebin logging, I confirmed. And then he said an error had occurred
during the repair. Giving me the link. But then at the bottom it said
change BIOS to legacy to be able to boot into your Ubuntu install (okay,
it has recognized an install of it at least, or the attempt anyway that
seemed to have been aborted) and then type command [sudo update-grub] in
order to add the Windows entry to your Grub menu.

So made a photo of that instruction, just in case.

Changed BIOS to legacy, rebooted... without any USB's anymore. Just let
it run lol. But Ubuntu started lol!!! It did!

And you know what? It seemed to be fully functioning. But I didn't know
yet (and I must say, I still don't know 100% sure). Then it was
detecting updates. And I thought okay well let's do those first and then
after them try that update-grub command. Then, even though I had
Livepatch and I thought that meant I didn't have to reboot again after
updating, it did ask me for a reboot. So I did. It was part of this
update I guess.

Then I got into a grub screen selecting Ubuntu or... and it was already
showing, the windows installation. But I thought "no this is still part
of the Ubuntu update", and thought I still don't know if the Windows
option would actually wórk as well, instead of just showing the option
(which guarantees nothing). So I chose Ubuntu. It did so succesfully
again. And then I got the opportunity to make the grub command. So sudo
update-grub. It did something.

And then it was time to test. So, guess what?? I just rebooted, chose
the Windows option this time. And here I am! Lol. Posting from Windows!

I wanted to share this because of that. Because in my view of this, this
has meant that I was able to install Ubuntu in parts. Going through most
of the installation succesfully, then using a live-USB-boot-Ubuntu again
to fire up boot-repair. And I was able to fix the remaining Ubuntu
problems that the installation was apparently still having.

I never would have thought it would work that way. That I could just
"finish Ubuntu installation" with a different program, in this case
boot-repair. To get the last grub step finished, apparently so!

So here I am, finally both work. Covered it extensively, with all my emotions etc almost lol. But you should be able to..
You should be able to use it. If anything I gave too much information. But if you just filter the unimportant stuff out, you should be able to use this.

And this comment is for the developer that was going to investigate this
as well. Never thought I was going to be able to fix this on my own. But
I did. In a surprising way.

Thanks all, bye!

-- 
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1943381

Title:
  what a nightmare (dual boot install Ubuntu) grub is messing up
  everything

Status in grub-installer package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  This started with me thinking I had created a surplus partition years
  ago already when trying to set dual boot up Ubuntu + Windows 10. I got
  it working, but I had my eye on this 530mb partition that I thought
  wasn't supposed to be there.

  But it stayed.

  Now only recently, I ran out of room on my Windows 10. But I had a
  huge amount of unused space on Ubuntu allocated storage. So... This
  was already a hassle. It was annoying AF, but... for a very brief...
  minute or so, it seemed like I had pulled it off. The threat I was
  dealing with was having to move space in front of the Ubuntu
  directory. In order to put it next to the Windows partition, for
  Windows to be able to add that space to it's total storage.

  I did one dumb move though (yeah bear with me I'm going to explain the
  whole thing because that's how fed up I am with this, maybe 2 minutes
  more reading time for you but a freakin days worth of work for me).
  After I had gotten away somehow with moving Ubuntu a place (it could
  still find it when selecting it in grub at startup and booted fine), I
  decided... after a little... search.. that this 530mb partition could
  go. So I deleted it.

  Then. Windows couldn't boot anymore. But Ubuntu still could. Now... I
  approached this in the most simple way I could IMO, which was...
  recover the lost partition fully.. so hopefully it could do it's
  mystery job of booting up Windows 10. Using "testdisk". And then... I
  found the partition. Made a call to "write". And then everything got
  wiped, and the whole situation got mirrored (funnily enough). Now the
  530mb partition was the only one I had left. And everything on
  there... the working Ubuntu partition, the still fully available
  Windows 10 partition that just couldn't boot anymore. All gone.

  Now, I could try and recover that data again. But I took my loss. And
  the problem I think right now??? When I succeeded to install the dual
  boot Windows Ubuntu years ago, if something was wrong, I could delete
  the partition of Ubuntu and I could just reinstall it. While
  apparently right now, that can cause (huge, IMO) problems. Because I
  started with using an Ubuntu live-usb. And deleted that remaining now
  completely useless 530mb partition I had as well. Then I tried doing
  it in a different order, installing Ubuntu and thén Windows 10. But
  (don't remember exactly anymore) I soon found out that was the wrong
  way to go. I eventually got windows running. Thén I tried installing
  Ubuntu next to it. And it was failing again! Because all the screens
  were... loading... from top to bottom or bottom to top (as if a
  scanner line moves up or down the screen to go to the next screens to
  display), and it was really laggy etc. And I think, this is where it
  went wrong... because I had still been used to being able to just
  remove partitions and install them back again... I wanted to with this
  failed install of Ubuntu again. But apparently... there was another...
  500mb partition, between the Windows and Ubuntu partition AND one of
  around 530 at the end after the Ubuntu partition. So.. I wanted to
  remove the Ubuntu partition. But I wanted to include it with Windows
  10 again (somehow... because it had worked previously to then select
  the partition size in the Ubuntu installation "next-to-Windows"
  again). So I decided to remove that 500mb partition between Ubuntu and
  Windows as well. And anyway... I ended up with problems booting up
  just Windows already basically. Without even being able to retry
  Ubuntu install successfully again. I couldn't even get into Windows
  again. (we're almost there) In the end figured out the only thing that
  grub rescue responded to was ctrl-alt-delete, which would reboot it
  again giving me back the brief option of selecting a boot device again
  without having to use a forced shutdown (yet) from grub rescue. Made a
  Windows image usb stick. Selected that as boot. And finally found that
  I could pick "repair windows", and then go for the option of command
  line. And then type "Bootrec.exe /FixMbr". And then I got rid of this
  grub rescue trap, and was able to boot into my already installed
  Windows again. I took a break! But in the end I thought.. okay...
  maybe I still got a shot at this. Tried again, and now..?? It didn't
  recognize the Windows OS clearly on my 1TB SSD. It took up all the
  space, so it should have been able to detect it. Tried repairing C
  disk when I was able again, because it can happen if Windows had
  trouble shutting down or something. Did a tip with "chkdsk C: /F" to
  fix any problems booting Windows. And then it "should have been able
  to detect Windows", and it was still not able to. Then, I thought I
  was very close, and thought okay well I just need to make a partition
  for Ubuntu on my own and select that one to install Ubuntu to
  manually. And then..?? I couldn't as easily. I still got trouble.
  Apparently need to specify all kinds of shit for that to be able to
  work again (but still not getting there... obviously, from my trouble
  reporting this bug). Maybe(?) because I was supposed to select
  "Windows boot Manager" as a device for the boat loader installation,
  as a last parameter before being able to attempt(!) installing Ubuntu
  (it's a literal quote from the walkthrough I'm following this time,
  "it's the windows boot manager as a device for the boot loader
  installation"). Don't know yet, and this bug is what happened when
  attempting to install Ubuntu the last time. A fatal error occurred in
  installing grub I thought it was.

  So that's it.

  Be glad, you know? You now have the full context that you would ever
  be able to get from me, that you would ever need to solve this
  problem. Or at least retrace what led to what. Maybe you can even...
  solve multiple problems with this? It's obviously a "use-case" like no
  other. So, think of it as free information.

  Thanks to you as well for taking the time to perhaps solve this
  completely, especially if you've read through the whole thing. I am
  still convinced such a thorough explanation will only save time in the
  long run.

  Thanks again!

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
  Package: ubiquity 20.04.15.17
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-27.29~20.04.1-generic 5.11.22
  Uname: Linux 5.11.0-27-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
  ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.18
  Architecture: amd64
  CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
  CasperVersion: 1.445.1
  CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
  Date: Sun Sep 12 22:06:03 2021
  InstallCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed maybe-ubiquity quiet splash ---
  LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20210819)
  ProcEnviron:
   LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   LC_NUMERIC=C.UTF-8
  SourcePackage: grub-installer
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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