WTF?! Ubuntu install killed Windows boot.

[iamtrout]

I installed Ubuntu. The drive partition was set up as

Win2K (5GB), WinXP(5GB), Linux (ext3, 16GB), Linux Swap (1GB), Windows Programs (53GB)

After installing GRUB loads but does not show any options for booting into either Windows. I boot into Ubuntu but it says my X desktop or something like that doesn't work. So I get stuck with a command line interface which I have no idea how to use.

This is where I probably did something stupid. Popped in WinXP. Did FIXMBR to all my Windows partitions. The weird thing is that it gave me a choice of THREE Windows partitions to log into, the third one being on a mysterious drive H.

After doing FIXMBR GRUB no longer works. Nothing works. I get an "error loading OS" message.

Did FIXMBR with Win2K disk. Same thing. Did FIXBOOT with Win2K. Same thing.

I don't exactly know what FIXMBR does, but I thought that it would fix everything from past advice that I got here.

Did I just f*ck up my system really bad? Because that would be really, really annoying.

 

[MSCoder610]

Are you saying that none of the 3 Windows installations listed works?

 

[iamtrout]

I should only have 2 Windows installs (Win2K and WinXP), but none of them work anymore. And for some f*cked up reason Ubuntu failed to load its GUI so now I'm stuck in command line and guess what? I don't know any commands! Because I'm a Linux n00b! But I thought Ubuntu WAS for linux n00bs. Hmmm....

I've heard online that Ubuntu will NOT mount the Windows partitions for boot while other distros like Mandrake and SUSE will. So now I guess I have to figure out a way to mount my Windows partitions so that they show up in GRUB. Oh, wait. I can't. Because I don't know any of the f*cking piece of sh*t commands and I don't even know where to begin to look....

Dammit I hate being ignorant.

 

[montag451]

if you have access to an irc proggie, then install and look for a linux noob room. they will be more than pleased to help, probably even more pleased then when i went and caused a flame when i suggested that some ppl like windows

 

[ColKurtz]

Your system is probably fine. FIXMBR put NT's (NT=W2K=XP) bootloader into the MBR. The MBR is just a pointer that tells the copmuter where the OS files are on your partiton(s). Grub is a bootloader just like LILO and just like NTLDR (which is what you're seeing now). NTLDR - configured in the C: (or whatever drive windows is on) \BOOT.INI is apparently pointing to the wrong linux partition and has bogus entries for XP.

Your computer only has room for one bootloader. You need to decide which bootloader you want to use. There's no easy answer.... you just have to pick one and go with it and learn how it is set up. In order to fix this, you'll need to know the partition each OS is set up on, and which partitons are primary and which are logical.

If you like grub and want to restore it, you can follow this tutorial. It will load Grub but you'll still need to know where your windows OS is if it doesn't add it automatically (it's probably hda1). If this is confusing, just read up on "configuring grub". Or you can just stick with NTLDR and read up on that as to how to add your linux partition to the menu (google "editing the boot.ini").

Good luck.

 

[daveshel]

Yes, I lost access to my Windows installations after installing Ubuntu 64. I expected a menu but don't really care: this is a test system at the moment.

 

[Nothinman]

All you probably need to do is set one of the Windows partitions active to get them to boot.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: iamtrout
I should only have 2 Windows installs (Win2K and WinXP), but none of them work anymore. And for some f*cked up reason Ubuntu failed to load its GUI so now I'm stuck in command line and guess what? I don't know any commands! Because I'm a Linux n00b! But I thought Ubuntu WAS for linux n00bs. Hmmm....

I've heard online that Ubuntu will NOT mount the Windows partitions for boot while other distros like Mandrake and SUSE will. So now I guess I have to figure out a way to mount my Windows partitions so that they show up in GRUB. Oh, wait. I can't. Because I don't know any of the f*cking piece of sh*t commands and I don't even know where to begin to look....

Dammit I hate being ignorant.

Been there done that.

With grub your configuration of the bootloader is located in /boot/grub and is either (or both) grub.conf or menu.lst

So to get to that you go;
cd /boot/grub/

To edit the configuration you have to use a text editor. Try nano. Others are pico, joe, vi, vim, emacs. Vi/Vim/Emacs are more advanced... with nano you use command keys to save and such...

Like you have a list of buttons at the bottom that represent ctrl-whatever, use those to save and such.

so you'd go
cd /boot/grub/
nano grub.conf
or
nano menu.lst

Which ever one.


Then you use the arrow keys to move around.

To add entries for Windows you have to know the partitions. Grub has a odd harddrive method that like programmers starts counting at 0. So 0 is the first, 1 is the second, 2 is the third and so on and so forth.

So if you have windows in the first harddrive on the first partition your menu entry should look like this:

title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


And that's it. Grub reads that configuration every time it boots up so the changes should be automatic.

 

[user1234]

The Ubuntu installation, like most Linux distributions, is supposed to recognize your existing partitions with other operating systems and add them to the boot menu. Of course, things can go wrong, but it's simple fix it by manually adding an option in grub to boot windows. Actually, I think the grub menu is hidden by default, so if you don't press any key it just boots Ubuntu after a few seconds, so normally you just need to press escape after the bios screens, and you should see the grub menu, which should have entry to boot windows.

But since you panicked, and used Windows to "fix mbr" you over-written the mbr (master boot record) where grub bootstrap code was installed. So now you can't use grub. I'm not sure why windows can't boot now. But the good news is that you can still fix everything.

First, you need a bootable linux CD like knoppix, which you can boot from. Then, you can re-install grub, and make sure there are entries for windows as well as Ubuntu.