Repair Windows 7 boot menu on UEFI

I am still confused about your partitions. Your 3rd partition is 138 GB and says System. What is that? Since it would normally be your Windows partition, do you know why it is not. Having two System partitions is not normal. I don't know how to get the System off the partition, unless you remove the boot flag.

Maybe you have confused between the volumes and the partitions. The 3rd volume is the recovery volume but the 3rd partition is exactly the Windows partition as showed in this link.

I remove the System off the partition by set its ID to a GUID basic data partition: set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7. I don't know how to get the 3rd partition GUID but I belive its GUID is a EFI System Partition one.

You say both Windows 7 and Ubuntu are in your 4th partition (140GB)....

The Windows 7 is in my 3rd partition and the Ubuntu is in my 4th partition. Maybe I made a typo somewhere

If you look in the 3rd or 4th partitions, does either one have a Windows folder in it? You could check using the live Ubuntu, or from a command window.

Yes. The 3rd partition has the Windows folder in it and the 4th partition has an Ubuntu folder.

This is my Diskpart readout for comparison. I do agree something is messing up the way your system sees the partitions.

Partition ### Type Size Offset

------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 System 100 MB 1024 KB
Partition 2 Reserved 128 MB 101 MB
Partition 3 Primary 122 GB 229 MB
Partition 4 Unknown 95 MB 122 GB
Partition 5 Primary 82 GB 122 GB
Partition 6 Unknown 18 GB 205 GB
I am also attaching my GParted Disk Management window for your info. Maybe you will see something. I used the screenshot utility then changed the name to something simple before saving. .

Thank you very much. Even I have solved this problem, I will have a look to make sure no problem remains.

By the way, how did you specify a boot partition for Ubuntu during setup ?

Saltgrass said:

boyans said:

EFI with GPT disks are going to create much headache, I think, until we get enough knowledge.:)

Not really sure the current situation would suggest this. But I do wish manufacturers would make an effort to inform their customers when a UEFI system is being used, and perhaps some direction about certain procedures, such as how to boot to a UEFI DVD...

I do really hope so. If I know that my laptop is using UEFI, things would have been different.

gregrocker said:

I have a question:

If this disk was installed using EFI then how was there a Logical partition, since my understanding is that EFI can only be installed to a GPT disk which allows no Primary or Logical partitions?

In my case, there is no Logical partition. There are only Primary partitions. 2 primary partitions which I use to store data and a primary partition to store Windows folder.

Are you sure this is a GPT disk? Look in Disk Mgmt, rightclick on panel to the left of the HD on drive map to see what it offers to convert to. MBR or GPT?

And if it's MBR disk which would have a Primary partition, then it couldn't be a x64 EFI install could it?

Sorry, I cancelled that post because I saw you had it fixed, but no, I am not confusing partitions. Some statements made, which I could have misunderstood, caused some uncertainty on my part...

gregrocker said:

Are you sure this is a GPT disk? Look in Disk Mgmt, rightclick on panel to the left of the HD on drive map to see what it offers to convert to. MBR or GPT?

And if it's MBR disk which would have a Primary partition, then it couldn't be a x64 EFI install could it?

It offers to convert to a MBR disk but this option is disabled. Using diskpart also confirmed this since there is an asterisk in the gpt column for this disk when I listed the disks.

Saltgrass said:

Sorry, I cancelled that post because I saw you had it fixed, but no, I am not confusing partitions. Some statements made, which I could have misunderstood, caused some uncertainty on my part...

Maybe it is because of my english By the way, thank you very much for your help

Does EFI confer any advantages that you prefer?

Have you considered reinstalling to MBR disk removing EFI boot disk from boot order?

It would be very helpful to have someone with your abilities make the comparison, stick around to help others.

Have you had to repair Win7 yet and learned the extra steps involved with booted repairs? This appears to upend many of the procedures and workarounds developed here.

gregrocker said:

Does EFI confer any advantages that you prefer?

This is the 1st time I know about EFI since I just bought this laptop .... last week and EFI is the default configuration. In my case, there is no obvious advantage since my HDD is only 750GB. The benefit from decreasing booting time is not enough.

Have you considered reinstalling to MBR disk removing EFI boot disk from boot order?

No, I'm not However, since I'm going to install Ubuntu, if there are problems after that, I would consider changing back to MBR.

It would be very helpful to have someone with your abilities make the comparison, stick around to help others.

It's my pleasure to contribute something back to the community

Have you had to repair Win7 yet and learned the extra steps involved with booted repairs? This appears to upend many of the procedures and workarounds developed here.

Since I had repaired Win7 on my old laptop using DiskPart, I have some experience in this problem.

@Saltgrass

Not really sure the current situation would suggest this.

1. Microsoft has introduced his own bootmgr.efi (and is using the EFI firmware boot manager just to boot his own boot manager). One more element to fix !

2. Linux implementations are still having errors when installing on GPT (I hope they already fixed it):
Example - if you boot an installation media say DVD using nonEFI way then the installation procedure by default expects MBR disk as destination and fails on GPT.

boyans said:

@Saltgrass

1. Microsoft has introduced his own bootmgr.efi (and is using the EFI firmware boot manager just to boot his own boot manager). One more element to fix !

Could you explain what you mean by one more element to fix? Any examples you could give. Not saying you are wrong, just need more info.

boyans said:

2. Linux implementations are still having errors when installing on GPT (I hope they already fixed it):
Example - if you boot an installation media say DVD using nonEFI way then the installation procedure by default expects MBR disk as destination and fails on GPT.

If you looked through the thread, you would see I did just what you said is a problem. You do have to add a special boot partition. But why install in Legacy mode if you have UEFI? But I believe the 12.04 version of Ubuntu did make some improvements over the 11.xx version.