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[ulao]

Safe boot, not safe mode !

 

Goal was to update 7 to 11. I needed to replace my 7 bootloader with 10's but safeboot killed me. I think because win7 safe boot does not support GPT or UEFI

 

 

I have two disks

0 - back up OS GPT

1- main OS GPT

 

all was fine until I accidentally enabled safeboot. Now the system boots up with many sys files shown and freezes after disk.sysI was able to boot to my back up disc by changing the boot drive in bios. and once in there tried to fix the issue with easyBCD but it edited the bootloader on m backup drive broke it too, now I can not boot to my backup drive. It looks like the bootlaoder on the main drive is still ok but its in safe boot mode. This mode just stalls and does not go in to the os. Tried normal and safe mode.using the windows 10 install CD I tried to fix the bootlaoder but pretty sure its trying to edit the wrong one as well. I need to remove this safeboot option some how. but not sure how to do it.Ideally windows 10 bootlaoder. If there is a way to install it on either drive and see both Discs, this would be best.

 

 

 

on a bright note I can see all my drives from the windows 10 repair. the one I used was x ( virtual drive ) but running bootrec can not find the file.

 

I see  the boot drives and each has a boot partition with a folder with languages. In the us-en I see a bootmanager mui file I'm not sure where the real one lives. These are GPT drives.

 

sisk 0 - said EFI/bootmager has a bad entry.

Disk 1 - does this safe boot crap and hangs as disk.sys

 

can I remove the safeboot option some how or fix either boot manager?

 

 

 

[ulao]

got one disk up and running with

bootsect /nt60 all /mbr

then used the bootrec tools

 

I'd really like to know more about what I need to know here, so all info welcome. Holding off in doing this to my main os for now.

[ulao]

after fixed both drives and managed to make everything work, I tried to install win8 upgrade ( goal to get to 11) and it worked fine then it reboot to a boot loader with:

 

windows 8

windows 8 setup

My disc 1 win 7

My disc 2 win 7

 

I really had no idea what to pick so I did the 8 setup. It immediately assumed the install failed, I guess that was a bad pick? It tried to undo the upgrade and filed. then I reboot to a broken bootloader.

 

 

so back to the repair cd and ran

bootsect /nt60 e /mbr  ( main  drive )  -- said I'm using another boot type?

 

bootsect /nt60 g /mbr  ( back drive )  -- said I'm using another boot type?

 

and

bootrec /fixmbr

bootrec /fixboot

bootrec /scanos ( found my two dics driver windows paths )

bootrec /rebuildBDC

 

reboot and nothing, I complete locked out of all drives now. What did it do? IS there no way to find this magic boot loader that can not find my drives?

Edited by ulao, 10 September 2023 - 02:59 AM.

[ulao]

I see this talk about bcdboot . I'm not sure my discs are efi bu I am using GPT. Hard to keep up with all of this.  UI do see both of my drives had the fat 32 hidden portions. So t was used at one time I guess?

 

A suggest I see is calling for a rebuild of the store

bcdboot C:\Windows /s [EFI system partition letter]: /f UEFI

 

I guess I can run that on both partition that I fond and see what it does but I'd like to know some facts. If GPT are efi then I'd feel better.

 

edit:

OH maybe this confirms that "On GPT drives, this is known as the EFI System Partition, or the ESP. This partition is usually stored on the primary hard drive."

 

if so I'm thinking the EFI's are good and I just need to point to them, but the error I see I this one

 

 

so maybe this is what I need? There is also this I read sbout

 

bcdedit /set {default} bootmenupolicy legacy

 

 

not sure I want that. If anyone can explain any of this I;d really apprentice it, things have changes so much since I knew what I wan doing.

 

 

 

What I think I know( please educate )

 

There is a moot manager (like a grub) that points to Disks BCD's ? And those describe how to boot to the os. 

 

the boot manager lives some where on a disk? This is what the bios hits?

 

I had a basic disc and converted it to GPT, so There are both files on the hidden drive (\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD) and the main drive (c:\widnows\system32\winload)?

 

guessing c:\widnows\system32\winload was the old bcd and the \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD is the new bcd?

 

There also use to be a ntuser.dat  and / or  boot.ini  on the root. Both of my discs are missing that. Maybe that was nt 5 and under?

Edited by ulao, 10 September 2023 - 04:41 AM.

[Wonko the Sane]

The (old) BIOS way of booting (since Vista) was:

BIOS->MBR->PBR of active partiion->BOOTMGR->\boot\BCD->Winload.exe->Windows

 

The (new) EFI way of booting is:

EFI->EFI System Partition (ESP)->bootmgr.efi->\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD->Winload.efi->Windows

 

The BCD is in both cases the equivalent to boot.ini, a boot configuration file, though the good MS guys changed its format from plain, simple, text to a stupid, complex, Registry hive format, then provided a set of tools bcdedit/bootrec that are difficult to use, in many cases poorly documented and sometimes palinly too smart for their own good.

 

The BIOS way of booting NT systems up to XP was:

BIOS->MBR->PBR of active partition->NTLDR->boot.ini->Windows

 

ntuser.dat never was on the root, and has nothing to do with booting it is the backing file for the portion of Registry related to the user.

 

The ESP partition is normally NOT assigned a drive letter, so you will need to assign a drive letter to it manually (using diskpart or Disk Manager).

 

The bootsect /mbr is a command that rewrites the MBR code, but if you have GPT you won't have any MBR code, so that error seems normal, as you are actually using another boot type.

 

Normally the PE on an installation disk should be able to rebuild from scratch a BCD with bootrec.

 

Maybe you have or had issues because you have both your disks connected (physically disconnect one of the two, at least you will break the booting on only one). 

 

You can try getting BootIce:

 

http://reboot.pro/fi...-bootice-v1332/

 

But you need to first spend some time understanding how the BCD and more generally the booting mechanism works.

 

Then, yes, the recovery should be possible with:

 

bcdboot C:\Windows /s [EFI system partition letter]: /f UEFI

 

See:

https://www.dell.com...on-your-dell-pc

 

Wonko

[ulao]

Could get a deep descriptor for this?

 

the (old) BIOS way of booting (since Vista) was:

BIOS->MBR->PBR of active partiion->BOOTMGR->\boot\BCD->Winload.exe->Windows

Bios - I would hope this eman the bios, as in pc bios.

            MBR is this hidden? A special place o the drive I can not see?

                       Not sure what PMB is that one is new to me.

                                                           BootMGR I s this a file I can see or is this also hidden?

                                                                              \boot a real folder
                                                                                            BCD as you said its a binary hive but is it the windload.exe or other file?

                                                                                                                              Windows as in the windows folder?

 

 

 

 reason for this is so that tI know what is what. I'd like to know where these parts are and what I can see. I'd like to know how EFI woorks in this way too but a bit unsure how the path skips bios? /Some how it must start there, right?

 

 

 

So as an attempt to fix this I will try one drive at a time.  I ran the recovery and

 

 diskpart

select disk 0

list vol

select vol 4 --- in my case, this is the fat32 drive (hidden)

ssign letter=z

exit

 

cd /d z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\

 

 

and yes all looks like its there, lots of boot files and langue boot parts. I see efi files as well.

 

bootrec /FixBoot  -- not sure why it was suggested to do this. It didn't do anything with the z drive letter? What was the point in all the above?

 

on the other page I had they said to do

bcdboot C:\Windows /s Z: /f UEFI

 

That made a lot more sense but I got error

 

failure when attempting to copy boot files

 

boot ice nce, but yeah I need to know what maybe broken before I use that. I figure I;d start by opening the BCD. but boot ice can not find one on the hidden drive. there is no efi and no microsoft folders, only a boot?

 

with the 1 drive in I see two?

https://ibb.co/FH0mZBN  ( sorry someone disabled my image option )

does it remember or did it find two entries. Also the path to the BCD exists using dikspart so I assume its good.

 

EFI I guess this is what I'm seeing, it lives in bios?

 

EFI System Partition (ESP) this must be the hidden partition.

bootmgr.efi unsure where this lives so I can not verify its there.

\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD I saw this when assign a letter in disk part not using dir in command.

Winload.efi pretty sure I saw this.

 

when using the command line on the hidden drive I do see a boot with efi files in it.

Edited by ulao, 10 September 2023 - 01:15 PM.

[ulao]

my edit timed out, but need to make a correction, I see mui files not efi files.

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

 

 

I tried to put some of the commands together here

 

if I try to copy boot files I get errors (see below ) if I try to make it active, it says its not a fixed mbr?

 

 

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list partitions

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.10240

 

 

 

I tried to do this first because I got the error below.

DISK        - Display a list of disks. For example, LIST DISK.
PARTITION   - Display a list of partitions on the selected disk.
              For example, LIST PARTITION.
VOLUME      - Display a list of volumes. For example, LIST VOLUME.
VDISK       - Displays a list of virtual disks.

DISKPART> list partition

  Partition ###  Type              Size     Offset
  -------------  ----------------  -------  -------
  Partition 1    Reserved           128 MB    17 KB
  Partition 2    Primary           7451 GB   129 MB


DISKPART> select partition 2

Partition 2 is now the selected partition.

DISKPART> active

 

 

 

 

 

 

The selected disk is not a fixed MBR disk.
The ACTIVE command can only be used on fixed MBR disks.




DISKPART> list vol

  Volume ###  Ltr  Label        Fs     Type        Size     Status     Info
  ----------  ---  -----------  -----  ----------  -------  ---------  --------
  Volume 0     I   ESD-ISO      UDF    DVD-ROM     3198 MB  Healthy
  Volume 1     C   media        NTFS   Partition   7451 GB  Healthy
  Volume 2     D   System Rese  NTFS   Partition    100 MB  Healthy
  Volume 3     E   back main O  NTFS   Partition    107 GB  Healthy
  Volume 4                      FAT32  Partition    299 MB  Healthy    Hidden
 

DISKPART> select vol 4

DISKPART> assign letter=z


Volume 4 is the selected volume.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

 
X:\Sources>z:

Z:\>dir
 Volume in drive Z has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 1AFC-3D76

 Directory of Z:\

09/08/2023  07:22 PM    <DIR>          EFI
09/08/2023  07:22 PM            32,768 TempBCD
               1 File(s)         32,768 bytes
               1 Dir(s)     294,215,680 bytes free

Z:\>cd efi

Z:\EFI>cd efi
The system cannot find the path specified.

Z:\EFI>dir
 Volume in drive Z has no label.
 Volume Serial Number is 1AFC-3D76

 Directory of Z:\EFI

09/08/2023  07:22 PM    <DIR>          .
09/08/2023  07:22 PM    <DIR>          ..
09/08/2023  07:22 PM    <DIR>          Microsoft
09/08/2023  07:22 PM    <DIR>          Boot
               0 File(s)              0 bytes
               4 Dir(s)     294,215,680 bytes free

Z:\EFI>cd microsoft

Z:\EFI\Microsoft>cd boot
 


Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot>bcdboot c:\windows /s z: /f UEFI  why c:\ ?????? are they assuming ????
Failure when attempting to copy boot files.

 

Edited by ulao, 10 September 2023 - 01:51 PM.

[ulao]

yes that was it, stupid people. You'd thing if someone was give info on how to fix something they be more details and not assume ...

 

So any help or info still appreciated here, I'm learning. Old guy in a new arena, ran windows 7 until this week. And I'm not liking it.

Edited by ulao, 10 September 2023 - 02:24 PM.

[Wonko the Sane]

C:\Windows means the drive and path of your windows installation (the drive letter is C: in 99.999% of cases and "windows" is the folder name of the windows install in 99.9999% of cases).

 

And it is expected that one learns the syntax for using a tool before using it:

 

https://ss64.com/nt/bcdboot.html

 

Still it is entirely possible that for *whatever reason* the boot files cannot be found on your installation, though it is a rare case.

 

The MBR is the first absolute sector of a hard disk or hard disk like device.

 

On MBR style disks (which you don't have) it contains booting code (which is chainloaded by BIOS) and 4 entries for partitions.

 

On GPT style disks (which you have) it contains NO code and of the 4 entries for partitions only one is filled with a "protective" ID of 0xEE spanning over the whole size of the disk, the actual addresses of partitions are in a separate table starting at sector 0x2 LBA. 

 

On MBR style disks one (and only one partition) can be made active, on GPT style disks NO partition can be marked as active as the whole concept of active partition is not used on GPT disks.

 

The EFI/UEFI will parse the partition table on a GPT disk and find the partition which is marled as ESP (with GUID of C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B) :

 

https://en.wikipedia...ystem_partition

 

and then find in there the bootloader.

 

The PBR (Partition Boot Record) or VBR (Volume Boot Record) starts on the first sector of any partition or volume and it contains the BPB (Bios Parameter Block, a set of information about the partition/volume and its filesystem) and boot code (that chainloads the bootloader).

 

In BIOS (normally) the install is divided into two partitions, one (that Microsoft calls System) that is the one where the bootloader resides and one (that Microsoft calls Boot) where the Operating System resides), see:

 

https://en.wikipedia..._boot_partition

 

http://www.multiboot....uk/system.html

 

The bootloader (BOOTMGR) and its configuration file (\boot\BCD) are both on this (usually hidden) "System" volume, the winload.exe is instead on the "Boot" volume (that normally gets the C: drive letter) in the \Windows\System32 directory.

 

In UEFI the install is as well divided in two partitions, the first one is the ESP one (normally hidden) and contains the bootmgr.efi (\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi) and the \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD files, the second is a "normal" data partiton (NTFS formatted) that normally gets drive letter C: and that has in \Windows\System32 directory the winload.efi.

 

Wonko

[ulao]

All of this info has been extremely helpful.  I have made many changes and recovered many times many disasters in my weekend quest here. There is one more odd ball that was thrown at me. With the info you have given me I'm pretty confidential can fix this but let me ask.

 

windows 8 metro? WTH?

 

So after I installed 8, it removes all of the work I made and boots right in to windows. I read up on this and they do it intentionally. I was able to run the bcdboot to get the boot manager back ,however I'm left with the GUI metro boot manager. I had it working in so that I saw two icons, 1 for window7 ( my back up drive) and one for the new 8.  I was able to boot in to 7 so I tried 8 and it failed. Then the boot manager got corrupt and now I broken again.

 

Well fine, I know I can fix this, but  have the other drive with the same setup. it already has two boot options, one for each GPT drive.

 

On that drive I booted ok in to 7 but 8 boots in to a black screen. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with UEFI. Or maybe this stupid metro boot manager. So I booted up my 7 OS and ran bootice. All is set up to boot to each GPT drive. I do see a metro boot option but it is not enabled.  Hoping I do not need it, as I do not want it.

 

 

There must be something new about windows 8 that is not like win 7 that causes it not to boot in to the os. I may be able to make this work by reading over what I learned but I have a feeling 8 did sometime new. As far as  Iknow 8 is installed on the same GPT drive. but my guess is not the EFI  way. Sure the hidden drive still exists, but maybe window 8 installed an mbr? Can you do that on a GPT? I really do not like 8, can not wait to get 10 or 11 on here.

Edited by ulao, 11 September 2023 - 03:18 AM.

[Wonko the Sane]

In theory it is possible to BIOS boot a Windows install on GPT disk (using a so-called hybrid MBR code), but in practice it is a complex and convoluted procedure, the probability you did that is 0.

 

The BOOTMGR in Windows 8 has a number of changes (when compared to the 7 one), but setting it appropriately it should behave just like the old one.

 

The switch is in the BCD, bootmenupolicy "Legacy" vs. "Standard", see:

https://www.eightfor...windows-8.5245/

 

But this is only the GUI vs. "old text only" behaviour, there may be some other issues in the BCD that prevents it from booting, or - possibly - you are "mixing" the Windows 7 bootmgr with the 8 one (whilst the 8 bootmgr surely can boot the 7, the 7 bootmgr may well be incapable of booting an install of 8).

 

It is a rare case of dual booting 7 and 8, particularly on EFI, I cannot remember having seen similar setups, in other cases of multi-booting I would suggest using a different boot manager (such as Grub2 or grub4dos-EFI) as "main" bootmanager, but for just 7 and 8 it would be an unneeded compication.

 

In any case the bootmgr (bootmgrfw.efi) must be the one from the latest OS.

 

Wonko 

[Wonko the Sane]

Double post, sorry, removed.

 

Wonko 

[ulao]

ok

 

on the main drive (win7) that one trying t boot to 8 I see

Bootmgr

BOOTnxt

and

BOOTSECT.BAK

 

if I replaced those with win 10 bootmager maybe that will work best?

 

and if i do that I loose my boot sections?

 

Is there a way to load this with bootice and also write back to it in win PE?

 

or maybe booting from win 10 CD I can replace the bootmanger? and add my two entries.

Edited by ulao, 11 September 2023 - 07:09 PM.

[ulao]

so I got it working.  but more sorcery.  And I'm done with it going to work on updating to 10.

 

I was able to boot to win8 via asking the bios to hit drive 2 instead of 1. It boots for 3 minutes then shows a GUI bootloader. I see both windows 8 and windows 7 on it. When I hit windows 8 it just right in to the os in 3 seconds. Not sure I understand that, not sure I care. It just works.

[Wonko the Sane]

If you are booting UEFI, the bootmgr (and also the bootnxt and bootsect.bak) are irrelevant and never used, likely that install was once booted via BIOS or it was resident on a non-GPT disk (i.e. MBR style) or maybe you ran one of the bootrec or bootbcd commands that update/change/correct the booting files for both BIOS and UEFI installs.

 

The UEFI does not use those files at all, and it will only load the EFI bootloader residing on the ESP partiton, see again post #5.

 

Wonko