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Some Windows Apps Make GRUB 2 Unbootable

Posted by timothy on from the windows-is-to-boot-out-not-up dept.

KwahAG writes "Colin Watson, one of the Ubuntu developers, published in his blog information about Windows applications making GRUB 2 unbootable. Users of dual-boot Windows/Linux installations may face the problem, which boils down to particular Windows applications (Colin does not name them, but users point at least to HP ProtectTools, PC Angel, Adobe Flexnet) blindly overwriting hard disk content between the MBR and the first partition destroying information already stored there, in this particular case — the 'core image' of GRUB 2 (GRand Unified Bootloader) making the system unbootable."

3 of 429 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I thought nothing was supposed to be there by mysidia · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nothing is supposed to be there except the user-installed system boot code, boot data, and hard drive parameters.

    Third party software certainly has no business messing with Sector 0 or the boot blocks unless it gets explicit permission, advises users of the risks in messing with the boot block, prompts the user to back anything up that's there right now, and writes its bits only to the portion of the boot block that is provided for its required purpose.

    It may detect bootloaders, and update their configuration, if the user accepts that, but bootloader configuration is generally stored on the boot volume not the boot block

  2. LILO is immune to this. by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Informative

    And yes, LILO is still supported and under development. LILO 23

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  3. FLEXnet, Adobe's rootkit by Animats · · Score: 5, Informative

    The big headache is FLEXnet, Adobe's "license manager". It's a specialized rootkit that gives the remote licensing system access to the machine at a low level. Which is why it tends to break things a Windows application shouldn't be able to break. On Windows, it runs a background service and contacts a remote server frequently, sending undocumented information to the remote server and accepting update commands to change software already on the computer.

    FLEXnet is the successor to FlexLM, a licensing system from the 1980s. It started as a UNIX product. It's been owned at various times by Highland, Globetrotter, Macrovision, and Thoma Cressey Bravo. It was unreliable in the 1990s, and the passage of time does not seem to have improved things.

    In general, it's best to avoid buying Adobe products which install the FLEXnet license server.