GRUB Detects Windows 7 on a Drive that Never Had Win7 Installed

[SteveRiley]

Arrrggggggh! I don't understand this. What else is GRUB finding?? I'm stumped.

Someone asked a simliar question at AskUbuntu the other day. One of the answers includes a patch to /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober that you can add to instruct update-grub to skip partitions during its scan. Not really a solution to your problem, but it'll clean up your GRUB menu, at least.

Alternately, you can add the line

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true

to the end of /etc/default/grub.

[Xplorer4x4]

Thanks, that will do for now but this still baffles me. If you think of any other possible ideas, let me know. I may shift data around, and see about a format, but honestly I am not convinced a format would even work given these 2 drives never had windows installed on them. They never had any OS installed on them for that matter. Although I had some linux vmware server backups on one of them but that doesnt explain the windows loader imo.

[Snowhog]

I don't think that Grub is saying that Windows7 is on the drives in question. I think it's 'confused' because of the file systems on the two partitions.

[Xplorer4x4]

In what aspect? Because it is NTFS? If that were the case shouldn't it pick up the third HDD as having windows? They were all formatted using the built in partion tool in windows for what it's worth.

[Snowhog]

See 1. List of partition identifiers for PCs and look down to 07 exFAT.

[Xplorer4x4]

Interesting, thinks for the info.

[SteveRiley]

If GRUB is really assuming that a Windows boot loader is present simply because the partition type is 7, I would say that's some serious brokenness.

[dibl]

Couple of points to add, which may or may not help lead to a fix:

In Post #5, I see that the "boot" flag is set on every drive -- that is not helping. It only needs to be set on the drive where grub lives (on some motherboards) or not at all. Linux doesn't need it, but some motherboard/BIOS designs do -- Intel boards, for example.

When you have multiple mix 'n match drives, it's best to stay strictly with UUID designations for both grub and /etc/fstab setups, and avoid /dev/sdxy, precisely because of the type of problem that you are having. oshunluvr gave us a command to facilitate keeping these things straight:

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

That will provide output that looks similar to this:

root@imerabox:/home/don# blkid -c /dev/null -o list
device         fs_type label    mount point        UUID
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1      ext4             /                  bea3a748-3411-4024-acd0-39f3882ddaf9
/dev/sda2      ext4    SDA2     /mnt/SDA2          8cfe2acc-7572-4b45-b25f-ed021bb1d78b
/dev/sdb1      ext4    revodata /mnt/REVODATA      ec21f5b3-7fd4-4f4b-af8d-cf787b147ae8
/dev/sdc1      ext2             /boot              ac7da829-aebb-46f0-806c-04a4d81a945a
/dev/sdc2      swap             <swap>             0d939b7d-48f1-47dd-aebe-77e7bd8c3503
/dev/sdd       btrfs            (in use)           c112ed57-0e33-4d4b-82c9-5c55932c529d
/dev/sde       btrfs            (in use)           c112ed57-0e33-4d4b-82c9-5c55932c529d

Using this, you can set up /etc/fstab, and also verify/troubleshoot the /boot/grub/grub.cfg settings.

[Xplorer4x4]

dibl, thanks for the info. I will try to dig in to it later this week and see if any of that fixes it. I have applied Steve's workaround for the time being, but I would prefer to actually fix it.

[SteveRiley]

Well, let's see if any of the readers of LWN's announcement of GRUB 2.00 might have a clue about Xplorer's little mystery...

http://lwn.net/Articles/504108/

[Xplorer4x4]

Thanks for passing it along Steve.

Sent from my DROID2 Global

[dibl]

My reading of the reply to Steve's note suggests that it is possible that merely removing the "boot" flags on all the drives will solve the problem.

[Xplorer4x4]

I removed the boot flags and rebooted. I removed the line from grub and updated grub. It still detects Window 7 Loader on /dev/sda1 which is one of my 2TB and has never had windows installed on it. It was partitioned by windows, but never used for a windows install.

xplorer4x4@xplorer4x4-MS-7673:~$ sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

device                                                    fs_type         label            mount point                                                   UUID
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/dev/sda1                                                       ntfs             WD3               /media/WD3                                                          34F89B62F89B2162
/dev/sdb1                                                       ntfs             Music             /media/Music                                                        A8CC48FACC48C3F2
/dev/sdc2                                                       ntfs             TV & Movies       /media/TV & Movies                                                  A69AA1C79AA193F9
/dev/sdd1                                                       ext4                               /                                                                   b5316a9d-f273-4faf-b4a6-6ec5c2b32688
/dev/sdd5                                                       swap                               <swap>                                                              87588a28-f2c3-4899-a70c-fd1657838ab7

[SteveRiley]

I can think of only two other things:

* The file Bootmgr and/or the directory Boot exists on that drive. They will be hidden, so use a tool that shows hidden files and directories.

* You have encountered a bug in GRUB or OS_Prober

[Xplorer4x4]

Indeed, Bootmgr folder and Boot file was there. I checked for Bootmgr first, deleted it, updated grub and no loader found. I went ahead and deleted the Boot file for good measure. Both showed up fine in Dolphin.