Dell Computer Boot Failure
Posted: 15 Mar 2012, 20:37
I tried to install Ubuntu 10.10 on a drive that already had Windows 2000 on it. The Install failed and took me to a
"grub rescue" prompt screen. Googling the prompt provided me with actions beyond my desire to learn.
I ran Testdisk with the non-booting drive as a slave to a drive with a Windows OS (multiple attempts to create a Testdisk Live CD had failed). After the Analyse step finished, it looked like the partition structure had not been damaged. It appeared, from the Testdisk documentation, that I needed to go the Advanced -> Boot -> Rebuild BS route. When Rebuild BS finished, I selected "Y" as the answer to the question displayed. At the next question, I selected "Write" and then "Y" to the next question which I thought would result in a bootable hard drive.
However, when the drive's jumper is set to "Cable Select" or "Single", it still does not boot into Windows but puts
up the "grub rescue" prompt screen. So a valid FAT Boot sector must still be missing. Going back into the Testdisk docs, I discovered that Dell computers have an extra partition on the harddrive. The Testdisk documentation shows the following for a Dell drive:
Disk 80 - CHS 4865 255 63 - 38162 MB (Enh BIOS mode)
* FAT16 >32M 0 1 1 3 254 63 64197 [DellUtility]
P HPFS - NTFS 4 0 1 4864 254 63 78091965
But I never obtained anything comparable to the above on my Testdisk screens. Plus the Testdisk documentation also states:
After Analyse, select the DellUtility partition,
use 'T' to change the partition type to DE.
Use the arrow key to boot into the NTFS partition.
Since the DellUtility partition is never shown after the Analyse is run, I do not have the opportunity to "use 'T' to change the partition type to DE". What do I need to do to make this drive bootable?
As a Slave, I can pull data off of the drive and store new data on it. I don't want it as a Slave. I want to be able
to boot off the Windows OS it contains.
Thank you in advance,
Bob
"grub rescue" prompt screen. Googling the prompt provided me with actions beyond my desire to learn.
I ran Testdisk with the non-booting drive as a slave to a drive with a Windows OS (multiple attempts to create a Testdisk Live CD had failed). After the Analyse step finished, it looked like the partition structure had not been damaged. It appeared, from the Testdisk documentation, that I needed to go the Advanced -> Boot -> Rebuild BS route. When Rebuild BS finished, I selected "Y" as the answer to the question displayed. At the next question, I selected "Write" and then "Y" to the next question which I thought would result in a bootable hard drive.
However, when the drive's jumper is set to "Cable Select" or "Single", it still does not boot into Windows but puts
up the "grub rescue" prompt screen. So a valid FAT Boot sector must still be missing. Going back into the Testdisk docs, I discovered that Dell computers have an extra partition on the harddrive. The Testdisk documentation shows the following for a Dell drive:
Disk 80 - CHS 4865 255 63 - 38162 MB (Enh BIOS mode)
* FAT16 >32M 0 1 1 3 254 63 64197 [DellUtility]
P HPFS - NTFS 4 0 1 4864 254 63 78091965
But I never obtained anything comparable to the above on my Testdisk screens. Plus the Testdisk documentation also states:
After Analyse, select the DellUtility partition,
use 'T' to change the partition type to DE.
Use the arrow key to boot into the NTFS partition.
Since the DellUtility partition is never shown after the Analyse is run, I do not have the opportunity to "use 'T' to change the partition type to DE". What do I need to do to make this drive bootable?
As a Slave, I can pull data off of the drive and store new data on it. I don't want it as a Slave. I want to be able
to boot off the Windows OS it contains.
Thank you in advance,
Bob