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Are Windows 8.1 updates known to break Grub4dos?


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#1 doveman

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Posted 18 June 2020 - 10:33 PM

My Dad's been running with a Grub4dos boot menu dual-booting between Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 for years but he's just let Windows 8.1 update and now there's no sign of the boot menu and it boots straight to Windows 8.1.

 

I ran BootIce to check and it showed that the Grub4dos MBR was still installed, so it doesn't appear that the Windows updates replaced that. I reinstalled it anyway but it still just boots straight to the Windows 8.1 boot screen.

 

The only Windows Update that I can imagine might replace the MBR is the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, which I always deselect when I'm updating my system. It doesn't appear to have replaced the MBR but maybe it deleted grldr, I haven't checked that yet. Has anyone found that it does that?

 

That's not the only problem that's started since he did the Windows updates He said after doing them it took ages to shut down and now it seems to get stuck on the Welcome screen doing nothing, as I monitored it for about 10 minutes via TeamViewer and when I opened Task Manager it showed it as 97-99% idle, with nothing under Processes but a load of stuff running under the Details tab.

 

He also couldn't get into the BIOS, despite power cycling several times and pressing Delete repeatedly. I have the same motherboard (Asus Z97-A) and I see the initial BIOS text and then Delete gets me into the BIOS no problem but my Dad says his monitor doesn't show anything or even any sign that it's receiving a signal prior to the Windows 8.1 Welcome screen appearing and when he presses Delete the monitor never shows anything, so it stops Windows 8.1 booting but doesn't show the BIOS. We're both using graphics cards, (him AMD, me Nvidia) so it's not that the BIOS only appears on a monitor connected to the onboard Intel GPU. I'll have to check what connection he's using though, as maybe he's using DisplayPort and it only displays via HDMI/DVI.

 

The only thing I could suggest is that he disconnects all his drives other than the boot SSD and if that doesn't work, reset the BIOS by removing the battery but I wonder if anyone has any other ideas about what might be preventing grub4dos working?



#2 doveman

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Posted 19 June 2020 - 08:39 AM

Well I just checked and grldr is still present on the C: partition, so I have no idea why Grub4dos is no longer working.

 

Is it possible that it can't see grldr on the C: partition for some reason (something to do with Secure Boot or UEFI perhaps) and it needs to be on a different partition or drive?

 

On my system I do have grldr on the C: partition (my Windows 8.1 partition) but I also have it on a different drive (shown as F:) and the menu.lst is only on that drive but I think I only put it there so that I could edit it regardless of whether I was booted into Windows 8.1 or Windows 10. I guess I could try deleting the grldr from F: and see if it still works with it just on C: but I need to be sure I'll still be able to boot into Windows to put it back if Grub4dos stops working after I delete it.

 

As for the BIOS issue, my Dad's confirmed he's already using HDMI so that's not the reason why he's not seeing it. I've suggested he try connecting the lead to the onboard GPU instead in case there's an issue with AMD cards that prevents the BIOS displaying.



#3 Wonko the Sane

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Posted 19 June 2020 - 09:26 AM

Is it possible that it can't see grldr on the C: partition for some reason (something to do with Secure Boot or UEFI perhaps) and it needs to be on a different partition or drive?

 

IF it boots UEFI the MBR code is never executed, and thus grldr will never be loaded. (BTW even if it was loaded it would do nothing anyway, as it needs BIOS, not UEFI).

 

:duff:

Wonko


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#4 doveman

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Posted 19 June 2020 - 10:21 AM

IF it boots UEFI the MBR code is never executed, and thus grldr will never be loaded. (BTW even if it was loaded it would do nothing anyway, as it needs BIOS, not UEFI).

 

:duff:

Wonko

 

OK, problem solved. It seems that when my Dad was installing an NVME PCI card recently he disconnected the monitor and then accidentally connected it to the onboard GPU instead of the AMD card and that resulted in nothing showing on the monitor until Windows 8.1 started booting. So the menu was working all along, it just wasn't visible and now he's connected the monitor to the AMD card it's fine again.

 

He sent me the attached photo of the BIOS which seems to show that the drives can be booted either as UEFI or not, at least for his three Seagate USB drives it shows both options and it probably does for the internal drives too if he scrolls down the list but that isn't really important, the main thing is he can boot the Crucial SSD not in UEFI mode and Grub4dos is working.

 

Hopefully the slow booting Windows 8.1 problem was caused by the incorrect monitor connection and that will be resolved now. I just need to get his second copy of Windows 10 working now. He had a Windows 10 partition for his flight sim and he wanted another one for general stuff, so I copied it using MiniTool Partion Wizard but that copy doesn't boot, so it's probably got references to the original partition (which is hidden via the grub menu) in the registry. I've found even some dedicated OS backup/restore programs have the same problem, the only one I've found that works reliably for cloning/restoring to a different partition/drive or even a new PC is Acronis True Image, so I'll probably just reclone the partition using that.

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  • Boot menu.jpg





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