Tags: ubuntu | windows

The other day I had the misfortune to run into Dell Data Safe. This is a Windows based backup solution that Dell appears to have been shipping with it's PCs for the last year or so. Unfortunately, when you try and dual-boot a computer with it, it becomes Dell Unsafe...! The terrible bit of software will over-write the MBR of a Windows 7 PC each time it boots. Why it does so it a mystery... Surely the people who developed were out of their minds when they came up with this particular method. A back-up and recovory solution that produces more problems than it solves.

Read on to find out how to deal with this bit of software and put it out of its misery...!

If you have come to this page, you probably don't have a functioning Grub. Firstly, don't panic....! This is much easier to deal with than you may think. Just follow these instructions:

1. Boot off a Live CD, ideally something modern.

2. When it's finished, find the correct Hard Disk Partition by using the Places menu. Select the hard-disk you wish to mount.

3. Eyeball the mounted disk to see if it is a Linux based disk.

4. Use the following to verify it mounted correctly:

mount | tail -1 

You should see something like:

/dev/sda2 on /media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444 type ext4 (rw,nosuid,nodev,uhelper=devkit)

Make a mental note of the Disk Id (the long address) and the disk id (eg /dev/sda2)

Double check this is the correct disk:

ls /media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444/boot

(Replacing the Disk Id with your disk Id.)

This should give you something like:

config-2.6.18-3-686      initrd.img-2.6.18-3-686.bak  System.map-2.6.18-3-686
grub                     lost+found                   vmlinuz-2.6.18-3-686
initrd.img-2.6.18-3-686  memtest86+.bin

5. Now reinstall Grub with the following:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/0d104aff-ec8c-44c8-b811-92b993823444 /dev/sda

This should show something like:

Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install'.

(hd0)   /dev/sda

NB: If you tried to re-install onto /dev/sda2 you will get warnings about installing to a Partition.Don't worry, just try the same command again with /dev/sda/

6. Now reboot and hope that Grub comes back up...! It will...!

7. Now, re-boot back into Windows 7 and remove the offending program. Eg, un-install Dell Data Safe completely. Do this by going to the Control Panel and "Add Remove Software". Now reboot...

And because of the awful software (that you deleted) you will have to re-install your Grub menu again. But hopefully this should be the last time you re-install it for a while...!

Inspired by Recovering Ubuntu After Installing Windows and this Ubuntu Forum Post. You might want to try and neutralise Dell Data Safe, but I haven't tried this yet...