Re: [Sheflug] Windows Applications Making GRUB 2 Unbootable

[Steve Fisher <xirconuk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 29 August 2010 10:10, Richard Ibbotson <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi
>
> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/2010/08/28
>
> Colin Watson would like to hear from you.  .......
>
> "  If you find that running Windows makes a GRUB 2-based system
> unbootable (Debian bug, Ubuntu bug), then I'd like to hear from you.
> This is a bug in which some proprietary Windows-based software
> overwrites particular sectors in the gap between the master boot
> record and the first partition, sometimes called the "embedding area".
> GRUB Legacy and GRUB 2 both normally use this part of the disk to
> store one of their key components: GRUB Legacy calls this component
> Stage 1.5, while GRUB 2 calls it the core image (comparison). However,
> Stage 1.5 is less useful than the core image (for example, the latter
> provides a rescue shell which can be used to recover from some
> problems), and is therefore rather smaller: somewhere around 10KB vs.
> 24KB for the common case of ext[234] on plain block devices. It seems
> that the Windows-based software writes to a sector which is after the
> end of Stage 1.5, but before the end of the core image. This is why
> the problem appears to be new with GRUB 2. "
>
> e-mail address on the page above.
>
> --
> Richard
> _______________________________________________
> Sheffield Linux User's Group
> http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk
> FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html
>
> GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation
>

I suffered from this problem, I moved to Ubuntu due to wireless driver
problems on a new Dell laptop.  The culprit was Dell's Datasafe program.
 Would love to help, but I uninstalled it.

Steve
_______________________________________________
Sheffield Linux User's Group
http://sheflug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/sheflug_sheflug.org.uk
FAQ at: http://www.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html

GNU - The Choice of a Complete Generation