help with boot loader issue after Windows update

J

jamsomito

2[H]4U
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Aug 29, 2010
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Hi all - I have a dual boot with Ubuntu on a spinner hard drive and Windows 7 on my SSD. Been using windows for years and I recently took the EdX intro to linux course so I have a dual boot between the two using grub for the bootloader. I installed some Windows updates this morning and when I did the necessary reboot, it deep-sixed my bootloader. All I get when booting now is a grub error and a grub command line.

Any tips? I'm really pretty new to all of this, so consider me a new beginner. I appreciate any help you can offer. Many thanks in advance.

(note I'm at work all day and I can't try anything until I get home this evening, but I will try to answer questions if I know before then).
 
Tried a bunch of things and it looks like my drive is dead.

Linux works from a bootable USB drive. Bootable CD's work fine too. Memtest shows no errors.

Various errors while booting from SSD, usually blue screens with F4 stop code. Sometimes hangs from within Windows, sometimes during boot, sometimes it won't find a drive to boot from at all.

The funny thing is, both my SSD with Windows and my spinner HDD with linux seem to have failed at the same time. I'm not surprised that either of them failed - SSD was a cheap Kingston unit ~3 years old, and the HDD was a cheap Seagate unit ~5 years old. I'm very surprised they both failed at the same time though.
 
Never thought of that. I have a second SATA controller on my mobo, maybe I'll try those ports. Thanks
 
Also a failing power supply can manifest as boot problems. Most SSDs lack power filtering circuits so they're especially sensitive to bad power.
 
Interesting. I got a new Seasonic last year, so hopefully that's not it. But it would be covered under warranty if so. It has always had coil whine, but I was under the impression that did not affect integrity or longevity in any way.
 
jamsomito said:
Interesting. I got a new Seasonic last year, so hopefully that's not it. But it would be covered under warranty if so. It has always had coil whine, but I was under the impression that did not affect integrity or longevity in any way.
Click to expand...

Although Seasonic is definately THE brand to go to I know one case where his 2 week old computer failed and the reason was the new Seasonic PSU. So even they have monday samples.

Just keep your antennas raised, if troubleshooting gets mystical suspect the impossible. :)
 
One more observation: I can usually boot to OS for a limited time from a cold start. Warm reboot after a freeze always can't find the boot drive to boot from


I looked into the controller issue. I was using all Intel Z68 sata ports before. I switched my boot drive to the Marvell controller and it hangs at "initializing". If not that, it passes initializing and says no drive connected.

I'm leaning towards a bad SSD... Any other thoughts?
 
I got ubuntu installed 3x in a row on my HDD, so I'm fairly certain it's a bad drive. It's just a coincidence that it died along with some windows updates, and some combination of that killed my Grub install. Boot repair only made it worse, but reinstalling linux and formatting the drive fixed it right up.

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. I sincerely appreciate the help.
 
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