Check to see if my harddrive is dead

Dymo

My computer won't get past the bios when booting and just goes to a loading page. And I have booted using the USB stick, I can see my hard drives connected and browse through files but it won't let me install Ubuntu.

Is there a way of checking if my HD is dead, or my first though was the boot loader is banjaxed and was trying to install UBUNTU's boot loader. I can't get as far as safe mode just the splash screen at the beginning of start up.

Is there a way to definitely discover if my HD is dead, as it would save me hours of trying to solve a problem that can't be solved

Thanks for any advice

PrzemoF

Dymo wrote: »

[..]won't let me install Ubuntu.[..]

Can you be more specific? I presume the system doesn't tell you: "Hey, I won't let you install ubuntu here!". Was it a warning that there is already a system installed and overwriting it might destroy your data?

If you can browse through the files make a backup. You disk is probably OK, anyway. It might be just a matter od refreshing grub to be able to boot from it.

What boot device you have set in BIOS?

The PC freezes when booting or there is an error message?

More information please and we'll help you

Dymo

PrzemoF wrote: »

Can you be more specific? I presume the system doesn't tell you: "Hey, I won't let you install ubuntu here!". Was it a warning that there is already a system installed and overwriting it might destroy your data?

I'm trying to install it with along side of my other OS and it says "it can't install here because of too many partitions" (3) and then manually I can't create a new partition

PrzemoF wrote: »

If you can browse through the files make a backup. You disk is probably OK, anyway. It might be just a matter od refreshing grub to be able to boot from it.

Prety sure it's not the HD now, I was able to write a file to it, I don't have ubuntu installed on HD I am using a live disk

PrzemoF wrote: »

What boot device you have set in BIOS?

Windos 8 boot loader

PrzemoF wrote: »

The PC freezes when booting or there is an error message?

More information please and we'll help you

No error message just the loading icon going round and round.

PrzemoF

Do you have a space to create a new partition?
What about reusing existing linux partition (make a backup!)?

What boot device you have set in BIOS?
Windos 8 boot loader

This is beyond my knowlegde - I was expecting CD/HDD/USB/anything but not a Windows 8 bootloader.. (Can anyone enlighten me if win8 is reaching to the BIOS..?)

OK, if you can boot from USB try this [1]
WARNING! I'm not familiar with win8 - do some more research before installing grub.

[1] http://karuppuswamy.com/wordpress/2010/06/02/how-to-chroot-to-ubuntu-using-live-cd-to-fix-grub-rescue-prompt/

Dymo

Thanks for the suggestion but still getting no joy:)

I was manually able to install a new version of Ubuntu on a new partition and hoped that would over write the windows 8 loader, but it didn't. I then deleted the partition with windows 8 on it and still when I boot up it goes to a windows 8 splash page and does nothing.

I've tried to make grub the main boot but I only have access through the live USB stick and the terminal won't take a lot of the commands and can't find files as it's not a full install.

At the moment I'm trying to repair windows 8 with the install disk but that's doing nothing.

human 19

It looks like you have gotten rid of you bootloader somehow. It depends where you installed the bootloader when installing Ubuntu. To get Ubuntu's grub bootloader to come up on boot, it should have been installed to the start of sda (the default option, I believe).

On th other hand, if you did that and then deleted the windows partition then maybe that deleted the bootloader. I dont know. Im not an expert as to where exactly it goes.

If you have windows rescue disk you coul try popping that in and see if it can let you restore the windows boot manager. Worked for me before, but I think I had to rtry it twice. (Edit...wont work if you have deleted the windows partition)

I dont know if windows looks for and finds other OSs when booting, which is why I normally install windows first and then the other linux distros, as they will see windows anyway. As I have sod all extras or files in windows, it doesnt bother me.

You can only have 4 primary partitions. Your computer may have a main windows partition, a windows rescue partition,a Dell or whatever partition already.. I dont know. Mine did anyway, so you need a swap + at least 1 more. At least 1 can me made an "extended" partition which can then be sub-divided. see my partitions below:
(all from sda5 to 11 are on the extended partition)



Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda2 1 5142 41302091 83 Linux Mint 9 KDE
/dev/sda3 13823 21482 61526977 7 Windows 7
/dev/sda4 5143 13822 69722100 83 Knoppix 7.0

/dev/sda1 21482 53941 260727867+ 5 Extended (partition)
/dev/sda5 21482 34615 105488384 83 Linux Mint home
/dev/sda6 34615 41057 51744768 83 Ubuntu
/dev/sda7 41057 41551 3963904 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 41551 46017 35873792 83 Linux Mint 12 gnome
/dev/sda9 46017 48649 21139456 83 Linux Linux bodhi
/dev/sda10 * 48649 51274 21085184 83 Linux Sabayon 8
/dev/sda11 51275 53941 21422646 83 PCLINUX202 KDE

For what I choose to be my main distro, I install the bootloader to the default location (the MBR??? - I know how to do it but I dont know exactly what Im doing),and then for subsequent distros, I install their bootloader to whatever partition they are on and the reboot into my main one and run "sudo update-grub" which finds all the others

Johnboy1951

Dymo wrote: »

I'm trying to install it with along side of my other OS and it says "it can't install here because of too many partitions" (3) and then manually I can't create a new partition

It seems you already have the full quota of primary partitions created on the drive (4) and so no more partitions can be added.

You can delete one of the primary partitions, create in it place an Extended partition, and then within that Extended partition create as many Logical Partitions as you need.

Obviously the partition you delete should be large so that you can fit in a few Logical Partitions ...... and it should be (though not absolutely necessary) the last primary partition - #4 - that you would delete.

Windows of late has a tendency to use several partitions, all of them primary, so I guess they are now making it even more difficult to add another OS .....

croo

Dymo wrote: »

Is there a way of checking if my HD is dead

Just on this point; There is a disk utility with the standard ubuntu live disk (i.e. it's called Disk Utiity in the menu), so if you can boot from a USB key you can use it to check the harddisk... from a hardware perspective - it won't check the windows filesystem integrity, you must use chkdsk for that. But at least you can confirm that your HD is not failing.

Dymo

Thanks for the replies, very knowledgeable, It would of been easier and quicker if the HD was dead. The windows 8 bootloader although it has a nice interface, if it messes up you're fecked.

I installed a new version of Ubuntu but it still wanted to use the windows 8 bootloader, I then tried to boot Windows 8 from a USB stick and it still wouldn't load the recovery file.

I then deleted the windows 8 partition to get rid of the boot manager via the Ubuntu live USB and it was definitively gone 0MB on disk but still the Windows 8 loading screen came up and nothing happened.

Finally I had an old copy of Windows 7 Beta and booted that from the USB stick and it was able to load the recovery mode. There was no System Restore dates available so I just used the startup repair and left it for a couple of hours.

When I came back the system had restored it self, repaired the Windows 8 bootloader and the partition that I had deleted and my new Ubuntu installation was also on my boot screen.

Whole day gone, but at least everything is back to normal now. It seems windows 8 takes priority over any other bootloader no matter when it is installed.

EDIT:

Found this

New Boot Sequence

For reasons we have not yet been able to discover, though we are confident they will be revealed in time, Microsoft has chosen to completely change the manner in which operating systems are loaded once selected from the boot menu. The usual boot process that just about any bootloader goes through is something like this:



With Windows 8, this boot process has been changed completely, and now something more along these lines takes place:



It’s a subtle change as the boot menu is not shown the second time around, but the PC actually reboots after making the selection. We’re not clear on why Microsoft is doing this, but if I’d had to hazard a really wild guess, I’d say it’s to clean up the environment that’s been altered/modified/corrupted by the new boot menu. Basically, it seems that the new boot menu interface has become it’s own mini-OS, and is possibly running in protected mode (vs the traditional real-mode bootloader), and as such, needs to reboot to bring the system back into a real-mode that the Windows 8 kernel can initialize from and bring the system from real to protected mode itself. In short: the new boot menu is more of an OS and less of a boot menu than ever before.

Stuxnet

handiest way to restore your mbr is with easybcd

you can then run grub to pickup your different os's

Dymo

OSI wrote: »

Dymo, can I ask where you found that info? Would be interested in looking at it more.

Here's the link
http://neosmart.net/blog/2011/the-new-windows-8-bootloader/