Unable to install Grub2 after Windows Overwrote MBR

[Guest]

Hello,

After a update the stupid Windows Overwrote the MBR and removed Grub2 and since then I'm unable to install any Linus distro. All of them fail while installing bootloader saying "Executing 'grub-install dummy" failed. How can I fix this without formatting my whole drive. Thanks,

[Bombastinator]

43 minutes ago, WickedThunder86 said:

Hello,

After a update the stupid Windows Overwrote the MBR and removed Grub2 and since then I'm unable to install any Linus distro. All of them fail while installing bootloader saying "Executing 'grub-install dummy" failed. How can I fix this without formatting my whole drive. Thanks,

How can you rewrite an mbr without rewriting the drive?  I don’t think you can. If what you actually want to do though is just have Linux run using that drive could be a different thing though.   There may be some way to use the system windows is using and have a Linux system that just uses microsoft’s ntfs stuff.  There might also be a way to save the data on that drive elsewhere, format the drive,put the data back on, and access it.

Edited June 24, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Guest]

33 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

How can you rewrite an mbr without rewriting the drive?  I don’t think you can. If what you actually want to do though is just have Linux run using that drive could be a different thing though.   There may be some way to use the system windows is using and have a Linux system that just uses microsoft’s ntfs stuff.  There might also be a way to save the data on that drive elsewhere, format the drive,put the data back on, and access it.

The bootloader is stored in the MBR. Also Linux doesn't support installation on NTFS volumes.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, WickedThunder86 said:

The bootloader is stored in the MBR. Also Linux doesn't support installation on NTFS volumes.

I knew they didn’t.  I didn’t know if it was still the case though.  There was a time when Linux couldn’t even read ntfs. 

[Guest]

58 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I knew they didn’t.  I didn’t know if it was still the case though.  There was a time when Linux couldn’t even read ntfs. 

There is no need for ntfs installation on linux. Ext4 and Btrfs are much more superior in how they handle files and fragmentation. 

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, WickedThunder86 said:

There is no need for ntfs installation on linux. Ext4 and Btrfs are much more superior in how they handle files and fragmentation. 

Yeah.  Ntfs and FAT are all win can even natively read.  Might be able to do exFAT too.  I’m not sure.  All of them aren’t very good though. Why use something that isn’t very good if you don’t have to?   It’s merely that if win can read your drive after it did it’s thing to it but still works with that drive and you don’t want to reformat you’re stuck with the ntfs win made, and with no partition table ntfs is the whole drive.  If Linux still can’t write ntfs Youre likely hosed.  If it can there might possibly be some app or other someone wrote to make a section of the drive workable by Linux.  Mac had something a bit like that for boot camp long ago.  They had their own fs that didn’t like ntfs anymore than ntfs doesn’t like anything else. I don’t remember  if it needed a working mbr or not.  It was of variable size though which implies no.