Windows Need 18.04 install Help

M

meetdilip

Adept
I currently have Windows 10. Some serious virus got into my laptop and disabled almost everything except USB. There is not even a shutdown button in Windows 10 now. So, I decided to sacrifice C drive and install Ubuntu 18.04.

The issue is that it seems to have gotten into the BIOS level. It disabled the inbuilt keyboard and DVD drive so that I cannot press any key to boot from CD. I used USB keyboard and booted from USB drive.

Now happens the funny thing. When I tried to install 18.04.1, it says

The ' grub-efi-amd64-signed' package failed to install into / target/. Without the GRUB boot loader, the installed system will not boot.
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This is what I get when I tried to install 18.04 twice. Even the installation of 16.04 didn't go well.

I was so annoyed that I booted from AOMEI PE USB and deleted the MBR partition and C drive. Now when I try to install Ubuntu there is only one drive, dev/sda. I am afraid I will loose a lot old memories saved as photos in the laptop. Is there any way that I leave the other partitions untouched and install Ubuntu 18.04 ?[DOUBLEPOST=1535041725][/DOUBLEPOST]After trying a lot of things, I now get only dev/sda to install Ubuntu. No other partition is available.Likedev/sda2, dev/sda3 etc
 
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are you able to boot into Linux without installing it? try booting into live os.

/sda is first hdd on the scsi bus. sda2 and sda3 would be partitions on the hdd. since you deleted the c partition, you probably destroyed the partition table.
if you want to recover the data follow few rules:
1. dont do any io on the hdd. probably disconnect it and connect to other machine which has proper os installed.
2. since you probably lost the partition data, try to recover the data using some tools which actually read the data sector by sector and then copy off the files to some other machine.
3. we will get to installing ubuntu after you have recovered your data.

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/recovering.html
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
 
meetdilip said:
Thanks. No way to make Ubuntu see other drives ?
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ubuntu includes support for ntfs partitions in the live os. which means that you will be able to see the other partitions but for that you need to recover the partition table first.
if you are able to see the existing partitions using gparted tool. the command line would be "parted --list /dev/sda" if this shows the partitions correctly; then use "partprobe" probe the drives and then later you can use mount command to mount the volumes.
 
First - be calm.

Second - you can install Ubuntu in a sdcard or on a more than 16GB usb 3 pen drive too. 32-64GB is good for a pen drive or UHS1 sdcard.

If you have a new external portable HDD, you can install Ubuntu in it too so you don't need to mess up your Windows HDD.

And like @booo said, if you want to recover important data from your Windows drive, please do not do anything to it now.

If you think the virus has gotten into bios, then first download the latest bios firmware from the manufacturer website and flash the bios. Flashing should remove any virus. After flashing, reset the bios to defaults first. Another method would be to remove cmos battery and reset the bios. Anything saved will be overwritten by the read-only backup bios.

To recover the deleted mbr, use testdisk from within Ubuntu. It is the best tool for the job since it will search the NTFS disk for mbr backups and restore the original from those backups.

So first thing you need to do is get a pen drive or another HDD and install Ubuntu on it.

edit: I forgot to mention this - while installing Ubuntu, disconnect the data and power cable of your windows hdd. Ideally, you shouldn't connect that broken hdd to the system now since it is infected and could infect new drives.
 
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Thanks guys. I am doing this on my laptop. I don't know what all to open before removing the CMOS battery. I did try reset defaults in BIOS.

I mounted my 18.04.1 DVD in Windows 10 and copied files to an USB. It works great as a bootable USB.

I can see all the drives in Gparted and Ubuntu live CD session's File Explorer

6pack said:
To recover the deleted mbr, use testdisk from within Ubuntu. It is the best tool for the job since it will search the NTFS disk for mbr backups and restore the original from those backups.
Click to expand...

There was some tool named Bootice in AOEMI PE Bootable USB which I used to recover MBR.

I will save as much data as possible on Saturday and come back to you for using the old C drive as Ubuntu install drive. So nice of you to help :)
 
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