[SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

pilf · 2013-10-31 19:20:27

Hi all,

Apologies but I am only posting as I have exhausted my (admittedly quite limited) knowledge and have spent hours trying to get it back up and running but nothing seems to work at all. This will probably be quite long, apologies if there is something really obvious that I have missed on the Wiki or anywhere, but I'm only posting as I can't seem to get anywhere with it at all despite reading and trying.

Essentially I had a Toshiba Satellite p850-321 laptop (UEFI, secure boot off, fast boot off) which I had dual booting with Windows 8 and Arch using rEFInd. I then had several moments of madness, starting when for some reason - on very little sleep so didn't think - decided to upgrade Windows 8 to 8.1. Unsurprisingly (but a surprise for me at the time), it then booted straight into Windows 8.1, no rEFInd. In hindsight, it had probably just set itself as boot priority but I thought it had overwritten rEFInd with its own bootloader or set it back to default or something so started on a way to try and get it back.

I then spent many hours trying to get my old bootable Arch USB stick to work with no joy, updating it to the latest arch iso and all sorts. It eventually worked when I updated the laptop BIOS. Booted from the USB, chrooted into arch, reinstalled rEFInd, played around, eventually got it to reboot and display rEFInd but Arch wouldn't start. At this point I noticed that my fstab looked strange (devices/labels mixed up from what I expected), so followed the Beginner's Guide again and recreated the fstab. My disk is partitioned as follows (main partitions of note):

/dev/sda2 - Windows EFI partition
/dev/sda4 Windows 8.1
/dev/sda6 arch swap partition (archswap)
/dev/sda7 arch root partition (archroot)
/dev/sda8 arch home partition (archhome)

Couldn't get rEFInd to work so decided to start again with gummiboot. Installed gummiboot, followed Beginner's Guide to install and configure it. Edited arch.conf and after having to mess about with the location of vmlinuz-arch.efi in the conf file, I have the options part looking like this:

options root=/dev/sda7 rw

Now gummiboot loads on startup but all I get on trying to load Arch from gummiboot is the dreaded:

ERROR: device '' not found. Skipping fsck
ERROR: Unable to find root device ''.

I've tried changing the root in options in arch.conf to UUID, PARTUUID and even different partitions (just to see what happened...) - the same. Is it likely to be due to me recreating the fstab and something is messed up there?

Another problem is that now, whatever I do, I cannot boot from the USB again to get in to even try to fix anything. The laptop on boot just hangs for a while and then loads the gummiboot from the disk drive rather than from the USB (I've set the boot priority, everything) and nothing will allow me to boot from the USB. That is probably a secondary issue, I can probably try to reinstall the BIOS again and see if that helps.

If anyone has had anything similar and has any solutions I'd be really grateful - anything. I don't mind being shown to be incredibly stupid, I get that a lot so have a lot of experience! - just anything that can get me back into Arch again without having to reinstall from scratch!

Thanks.

Last edited by pilf (2013-11-02 19:45:44)

srs5694 · 2013-11-01 16:14:53

First, I recommend using gdisk to check your partition table. Use the "v" option to check for problems. If there are any, correct them. If not, you might want to consider using the "s" option to sort your partitions, since you've got some gaps in the numbering. Those gaps shouldn't be causing problems, but it's conceivable that there's a bug in something that is causing problems because of the gaps. This will require changing any configuration files (/etc/fstab, gummiboot or rEFInd files) that refer to partitions by /dev/sda# names.

If that fails, post back with detailed partitioning information, such as the output of "p" in gdisk.

Also, initial RAM disks can be sensitive to changes in partitions and boot methods, so you might need to rebuild your initial RAM disk. You should be able to do this using a live CD and a chroot into your regular installation. There's probably an Arch wiki entry on this, but I don't happen to have a URL handy.

pilf · 2013-11-02 12:13:14

Thanks for replying, very much appreciated. The partitions were numbered sequentially, I only posted up the partitions that I thought were of interest to the issue (which wasn't very helpful!). The partitions are as follows:

Partition No Type
1 Win Recover
2 EFI System (EFI partition)
3 Microsoft Reserved
4 Microsoft Basic (Windows 8.1 installation)
5 Windows Recover
6 Linux Swap
7 Microsoft Basic (Arch root partition)
8 Microsoft Basic (Arch home partition)
9 Windows Recover

It looks like I have managed to solve it, but I admit I'm not sure what of the several changes I made that solved it. I managed to boot into the USB arch disk by resetting my BIOS back to defaults and then changing the boot order back, which was the only way it would boot the USB - without resetting back and putting the boot order back exactly how it was before it wouldn't boot from the USB. Anyway...

Checked the partitions with gdisk, no problems. I did sort the partitions as you mentioned, just in case. Changed the partition names using gdisk to the same names I had before (archroot, archhome, archswap). Changed the types from Microsoft Basic to Linux filesystem (partitions 7 and 8) and wrote the partition.
Mounted everything, chrooted, edited the gummiboot arch.conf file and noticed there were some strange characters in it, a forward slash before /root in the options for example. I had edited the arch.conf file from windows by booting into Windows, mounting the EFI partition (mountvol z: /s) and editing it that way, which would have messed up the formatting. It can't have only been that though as it wasn't booting anyway which is why I went into Windows to edit the file in the first place. Corrected the arch.conf file, rebooted and it booted. Some errors on boot which I need to correct but I can work on those as it boots into my arch installation.

So all solved. I thought I'd update just to say thanks for the advice and in case it helps anyone else in the future.

srs5694 · 2013-11-02 17:51:32

pilf wrote:

Thanks for replying, very much appreciated. The partitions were numbered sequentially, I only posted up the partitions that I thought were of interest to the issue (which wasn't very helpful!). The partitions are as follows:

I'm glad you got it solved, but I'd like to point out that you should not censor the information you present in this way. In fact, even the partition list you presented in the same message I've just quoted is inadequate, and is not what I asked for earlier. As a general rule, when presenting technical details (partition tables, the output of tools like "df" or "free", etc.), you should cut-and-paste the output (and perhaps the command that produced it) between code tags (see the section "Code" on this page). For long output, use a pastebin site and post the URL that it gives you. Sometimes, of course, this is excessive; but as a general rule, people who try to edit the information that their tools produce omit critical details that they didn't realize were important.

pilf · 2013-11-02 18:41:09

srs5694 wrote:

I'm glad you got it solved, but I'd like to point out that you should not censor the information you present in this way.

No problem, any other posts I'll post the correct output. It was done from memory as I was posting on a Windows machine as, at the point of the first post, I couldn't even boot into the USB to chroot or do anything. Cheers for the advice and help with it.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-10-31 19:20:27

[SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

#2 2013-11-01 16:14:53

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

#3 2013-11-02 12:13:14

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

#4 2013-11-02 17:51:32

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

#5 2013-11-02 18:41:09

Re: [SOLVED] Windows 8.1, lost Arch boot loader, cannot reinstall or boot

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