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I recently used WoeUSB to (attempt) to create a bootable windows install drive

It installed grub-pc and removed grub-efi so as per another answer on Ask Ubuntu https://askubuntu.com/a/381560/924681, I ran grub-update and grub-install. On reboot it failed to boot

Now my bios refuses to boot from it and Windows Setup insists it's 0mb free of 0mb

Testing via BIOS indicates the drive is OK. I tried using diskpart to clean the drive to no avail (windows command prompt from recovery options)

It was GPT (UEFI x64) and previously dual booted Windows 10 and Ubuntu mate 19.04. This is a Lenovo ThinkPad T430s

I do have a 32gb flash drive that I can use though to boot from (that's what windows setup is currently on)

unixandria
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  • I am thinking you don't/can't get access to a ubuntu install disk right now, but have a windows one. Can try this site to get windows booting, then we work on ubuntu. https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523/how-to-manually-repair-windows-7-boot-loader-problems/ – crip659 Jul 10 '19 at 18:30
  • If Windows is on a gpt partitioned drive, it will be UEFI boot. So be sure to boot any repair media in UEFI boot mode as then it will make UEFI repairs. Same with Ubuntu, if UEFI, always boot live installer in UEFI boot mode to make UEFI repairs. Should never boot in BIOS mode with UEFI hardware & UEFI installs. – oldfred Jul 10 '19 at 19:35
  • @oldfred should boot in uefi mode. I say should because my bios has an option to support both at once, but you pick which it boots first. Maybe I should switch to strictly uefi? – unixandria Jul 10 '19 at 20:21
  • My motherboard was strange. The setting for UEFI or BIOS would only boot in BIOS mode. So I always had to use UEFI only, but have UEFI Secure Boot off. And some setting on allow full USB or boot from USB. For Ubuntu this shows first screen, you you can be sure which way you have booted. Shows installer with screen shots. Both BIOS purple accessibility screen & UEFI black grub menu screen https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI – oldfred Jul 10 '19 at 22:33
  • @oldfred setting strict uefi gets it booting, but not successfully-hangs during boot of Ubuntu – unixandria Jul 14 '19 at 16:22
  • What brand/model motherboard? What video card/chip. Some need boot parameters & nVidia needs nomodeset boot parameter. And parameters between UEFI & BIOS may not be same. Also some systems (newest AMD) do not like anything after 18.04. AMD releasing UEFI fix. – oldfred Jul 14 '19 at 17:59
  • @oldfred it's not Nvidia, it's only a $300 laptop lol. Lenovo ThinkPad T430s. I've always booted in uefi so that shouldn't be a problem. The issue, as I noted, started after woeusb installed grub-pc instead of grub-efi and now my hdd isn't being recognized by a Windows install and Ubuntu won't boot – unixandria Jul 14 '19 at 18:25
  • Do you have an Ubuntu live installer and can you boot from that? Then run Boot-Repair and post link to summary report. Do not run any fixes until reviewed. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair – oldfred Jul 14 '19 at 19:43
  • @oldfred should have the summary tomorrow all going well – unixandria Jul 14 '19 at 19:51
  • @oldfred looking like somehow grub killed my hdd.... Now while live booting I'm getting "ata1: COMRESET error -(errorno 16). Had Android kill an SD card doing a similar thing. That one though I was able to /dev/zero it out – unixandria Jul 17 '19 at 04:06
  • This says you may need fsck on ext4 partitions on whatever drive is ata1. That should be an internal drive, so you still should be able to boot USB flash drive installer in live boot mode. https://askubuntu.com/questions/62295/how-to-fix-a-comreset-failed-error & fsck details: https://askubuntu.com/questions/642504/ubuntu-14-04-is-not-booting-normaly-after-a-manual-hard-boot/642789#642789 – oldfred Jul 17 '19 at 16:42
  • @oldfred fsck fails with bad superblock error – unixandria Jul 17 '19 at 22:13
  • Do you have good backups? You can try this: Remove first inode to use alternative superblock: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1682038 List backup superblocks: sudo dumpe2fs /dev/sda5 | grep -i backup then use backup superblock, 32768 just an example, try several sudo fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda5 – oldfred Jul 17 '19 at 23:11

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It was a badly timed hard drive death, as it turns out

Replaced with an SSD

unixandria
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