Ubuntu Installation :: Can't Boot Windows XP (separate HDD) After Upgrade To 10.04
Jun 15, 2010
Basically, as the topic reads, I normally run Windows XP, and installed Ubuntu on a new HDD this week (Karmic). However, realising later that there was a new release, I just upgraded through the network, completely ignorant of their being anything wrong with this (Windows drive still being connected at this time). Now Ubuntu boots fine, but when I select Windows through the GRUB set-up, it just displays a black screen with the '_' cursor blinking and goes no further.
I have absolutely no clue how to fix this, reading through various forum posts and messing with the boot command (or whatever you call it when you push 'e' at the GRUB screen) all day to no avail. One of the things I've download was the Boot_Info_Script, so hopefully someone out there can gleam some information on how the heck I can solve this issue and boot XP once again (hopefully without having to just blow away one or both of the OS's and doing a completely clean install). If there's anything I can do to provide any further required information, My RESULTS.txt:
I would like to have 1 hard drive operate with Ubuntu 10.04 and another with Windows 7 Pro, with a proper boot selection menu when I boot up my computer.
install fedora 11 on Vista I want to keep the windows boot loader and also install on a usb drive or a seperate partition that has 10GB free "install doesn't see partition's". Recently I installed ubuntu and had a major problem with booting, without having the usb drive connected I couldn't boot windows so uninstalled it. I'm trying to install now but install does'nt give me any option to select partitions from my drives one 320GB "portable, 3 partitions" and 80GB "main os 2 partitions one partition has 10GB free"
I just bought a new Windows 7 machine and want to install Ubuntu 10.10 for a dual boot environment.There's a lot of info describing how to do this, but it all describes re-partioning the Windows drive, burning Ubuntu on a CD, inserting that CD, etc. I had a dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu machine that just died on me. Windows was on one hard drive and Ubuntu - along with my entire software development environment - was on the other. As far as I know both drives are fine.
When my new (Windows) machine gets here I want to open it up and stick in the Ubuntu hard drive from my old machine... but then I'm not sure what to do. I'd really like to be able to boot to that hard drive (or the Windows one), just like I did before. It seems that this should be simpler than installing a fresh Ubuntu from a special CD, after all, everything is already expanded and working on the hard drive. Can someone give me some pointers that will help me solve this problem?
I just did an upgrade from 9.10 to 10.04 and now I can't boot into Windows 7 on this dual boot desktop. I usually do a clean install but with a laptop and desktop a copy of Windows 7 and Ubuntu on each machine it's getting very tiring with 4 os's so opted for the upgrade this time.
During the installation there was a window that game up about upgrading grub and what devices to install it on. The help box was not very complete and seemed to say to click all the check boxes which included the main drive and it's partitions including windows. During the install somewhere it said something like grub could not be installed on one of the devices which I think was sda6 which is probably the Windows 7 partition.
So how would I get the option of booting into Windows 7 on startup as now I only get a blank black screen when I click on the Windows 7 option upon bootup? I hope I don't have to reinstall one or both os's again from scratch as this is becoming to much work to do on two systems every 6 months, especially with the amount of programs I have installed.
I want to set up my PC so that I have Windows 7 installed on one hard drive and Ubuntu Studio installed on a completely separate hard drive. I currently have both hard drives installed in my PC and the larger one (640GB) has Windows 7 installed and is currently taking up that entire drive. My other hard drive (160GB) has a wubi install of Ubuntu 10.10 on it so it shows up on the Windows boot menu. What I want to do is wipe the smaller hard drive and install Ubuntu Studio on it and have it show up in the boot menu just like my wubi install does.
I need to know things like: 1. When I install Ubuntu Studio, do I install the boot loader to the MBR of the hard drive I'm installing it on? 2. How exactly do I add Ubuntu Studio to the Windows boot loader?
I originally had my full hard drive as a full Ubuntu partition but I then re-sized that and installed Windows on a new partition. Now I guess the boot sector got overwritten and I don't have a choice to boot either Windows or Ubuntu. I know I have to reconfigure GRUB or another boot loader to allow the choice but I am not sure of how to go about that.
I have searched and searched but cannot find someone with the exact problem as me. I upgraded to LL today. During the installation it asked me which parts to install grub to. I should have just checked all the boxes, but i cant remember wat i pressed.
Now my grub menu look like
-ubuntu -ubuntu memtest -windows 7
when i choose windows 7, it just goes straight back to the grub menu . .
I just upgraded to 10.04 and now all I'm getting is a flashing cursor when I try to boot Windows in Grub. I can load the Windows partition in linux no probs so I know it's all ok, although I'm going to backup before I try anything risky!
Anyway I've had a look around and can see people who've had the same prob but only really with Windows Vista and 7. So... just trying to figure if there's anyway of getting grub to load WindowsXP properly!?
I've run boot_info_script055.sh which was recommended for one of the Win7 answers and posted the output below.
Quote:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #5 for /boot/grub.
After upgrading to 11.04 (x64) in the second monitor I see just the background but no desktop. X server configuration was done in previous versions with NVIDIA X server settings tool.
After upgrade to Ubuntu 10.4 i can't boot windows partition. the only thing i get it's a blinking underscore after choosing it from grub. under ubuntu the window partition seams to be ok, and i can access every file.
this is my partition table: sda1 - ntfs sda2 - extended sda5 - swap sda6 - ext4 linux (0x83)
is there any tool to config grub? like yast on suse? (off the topic : is there any "grafic" version of grub?)
After the upgrade to Ubuntu 10.4 I'm not able to boot on my Windows Vista any more. It is most likely due to my fault during installation, since I ask to overwrite with GRUB also Windows partition's MBR (but if I remember well I think it was not the best solution to put as default overwriting all the MBRs).Anyway I was not able to fix it until now.Here is the RESULT.txt from the boot script:
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
I will be helping a friend upgrade from 9.04 through to 10.04 LTS, and I am aware that the machine was installed with a separate home partition. I know a clean install is an option however I am tempted by online version upgrades with the thought that any apps they are using will be carried over. Is this a realistic hope? I know that medibuntu for example does not survive a version upgrade.
Added an SSD (dev/sdc) and decided to move some less often changed directories there. Started with /usr and /boot, leaving / on a primary in the first drive, for now. All started ok, and my changed fstab mounted the right ones, and the system works.
However, grub is actually using the original /boot on / on sda1. I cannot see any way to change this. (Which makes it sorta hard to update the kernel
From grub:
Okay, since it has two choices, I tried to tell it which one to use. But, grub> root (hd2,5) does nothing.
Disk /dev/sda:
what I seem to recall, grub doesn't care about the boot flag on the disk. Nor does it care about primary vs. logical (except GNU doc says "makeactive" only works on a primary?).
The GNU doc also indicates that it looks for a directory /boot on the partition, so if you're mounting a partition as /boot, it also needs to contain a /boot directory under it. Tried that, but no change.
Is my problem the logical partition? Does that prevent "grub> root" from changing it? I'm afraid to wipe out the old /boot and find that I can't start up.
My hard drive apparently has errors, according to my Windows 7 installation. ._. So I am going to restore to factory settings. First question - Will factory setting make me lose my Anytime Upgrade? If so, is the key that was in the anytime upgrade box re-useable? Second Question - Under the chance that I have data loss once setting up my Ubuntu-Windows 7 Dual boot system, will I lose my anytime upgrade, and is it re-usable?
I have a dual boot laptop (Acer Timeline 1830) working fine. I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 and Windows 7 Home Premium Edition. I need to upgrade Windows 7 Home Premium to Windows 7 Professional (Thats Winblows for ya.). My questions: Has anybody here done this upgrade, did it go seamlessly (Didn't destroy your master boot record, etc) and is there anything anything else i should know before doing this upgrade?
I've currently got a dual-boot setup with Vista and 10.10 (using grub2 on MBR).I'm about to install Windows 7 and would like for a change to use the Windows bootloader. I currently have a separate /boot partition and believe I can install grub2 there so that I can chainload it using EasyBCD.
I'd like to do this from my running system as I don't have a spare USB drive right now. confirm the command I should use baring in mind the separate /boot.If I have to wait and do it from the Live CD - is the command to use any different? FYI here is my current layout:
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on /dev/mapper/vg_root-root 37735960 15719388 20099644 44% / none 1023876 316 1023560 1% /dev
We were trying to install w7 on a reserved partition. W7 did not like the partition (whatever we tried).
Since we had 3 hard-drives, on the allocated drive we deleted all partitions and set the partition table type new to MSDOS (yast etc.....).
W7 installed fine. We did not time it, but it appeared that 11.3 installs faster plus considering 11.3 installs quite a number of applications.
There are plenty of postings re integrating W7 to the Grub-menu.
This system went through several Suse updates, hardware upgrades, basically was all over the place.... we did a "new" install of 11.3 allocating its own hard-drive.
Install......fine, and Grub entered W7 to the menu. Worked ! Mounted the windows partition to /home/yourusername/windows
So, if you really (?) need W7 and have a spare hard-drive, this maybe is a clean solution.
I recently performed a reinstall of ubuntu after mucking up my partitions, and I am running it dual booted with windows 7.
I recently performed a grub-pc update, but I didn't know what it was asking me to do during the process itself of updating the process.
It asked me at one point where to install grub, and I selected all my partitions because it suggested that if I didn't know. I think that may have damaged my windows section, which was also selection.
I've attached the output for:
Code:
Problem symptoms:
1) Weird upgrade error in apt-get 2) Unable to boot windows 7 3) Unable to activate proprietary drivers 4) Perpetually being reminded to restart
yestoday,after I upgrade,unable to boot windows xp. if I use grub ,windows xp can boot up.but now I want to use grub2, boot info script's results.txt is at below.
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
Boot Info Summary: => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #6 for /boot/grub. sda1: File system: vfat Boot sector type: Fat16 Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
I recently put ubuntu on my laptop in hope that most of my games would run through wine, some did and some didn't.
Anyway, long story short, I have ubuntu on my laptop and I want to re install windows onto a separate partition, keeping my ubuntu instillation in tact and set as my deafault OS.
I'm very new to ubuntu and the only guides i've seen are fairly complex. I was just wondering if anyone could point me in the right direction? p.s. Is there maybe a way to create an image of my current ubuntu nstillation/settings/apps etc. just in case I do something wrong and lose everything?
I have tried (a few times now lol) to get this setup. I am using Windows 7 64-bit and Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit. I have Windows 7 installed on one hdd, another hdd has the System Reserved partition along with a data partition for files, the third hdd is the one where I want to install Ubuntu. I have found numerous tutorials on installing them both on the same drive, but not on separate ones. The couple I have found haven't really worked.
I think that Ubuntu is installed correctly but there is no option to boot into it. Windows 7 just happily loads itself. I have tried reinstalling and selecting 'sdc1' (the native ubuntu partition) as the location for the bootloader to be installed and then used Easy BCD to add that location to the windows bootloader which gives the option to load Ubuntu but when selected dies complaining that there is a missing file (I think it just can't find the Ubuntu bootloader).
As an aside when I get to the installation screen the Ubuntu installer keeps on telling me that there are no operating systems detected on the machine (Even though I'm pretty sure the drive it is talking about 'sda' is where Windows 7 is installed). Not sure if that matters just seemed a little wierd.
I have 2 sata HDD, I wish to dual boot, but in a way to have Windows on one and Ubuntu on the other.
For some reason I could not get Ubuntu (10.04) to install from the live CD or Wubi or from Windows on the same HDD.
I downloaded the advanced distro and went with that straight onto the HDD and it has been a gem (love how it just works with no drama).
I want to install windows XP again on the 2nd HDD, as there is one game that I play in windows. (I've got it to work in Wine I just don't like / can't get used to it)
My Question is: installing windows on a 2nd HDD and then being able to choose which one to boot.
I've read about installing Windows after Linux in the user guide and reinstalling grub2 - I got the impression though, the they were installed on the same HDD and thought that what I want to achieve may differ?
I have been messing around with the ubuntu family for some time now, and usually have no problem finding my answers. This one, however, is giving me some trouble. I have been using ubuntu on my laptop for some time now, and recently got a new 2TB hard drive for my desktop. I cloned the old hard drive to the new one, and decided to install ubuntu onto a third drive. The third drive was IDE, the new one is SATA. I disconnected the other hard drive, and so my current set up is a SATA drive with Windows 7, and an IDE drive with Ubuntu (11.04 of course)
Well, I am unable to dual boot between the two, unfortunately, and would like to figure out how. I would like to say the problem is with Windows, since that is the primary drive. No GRUB shows up upon booting when both drives are plugged in, and the Windows Bootloader does not show my installation of Ubuntu, instead it goes right to Windows.
I have been a happy little GRUB user for a while now, but now I want to use GRUB to boot a physically separate WinXP hard drive, and I can't seem to do that. Normally GRUB is easy, (I even have a nice splash screen of my own making). Its a champion solution for booting into Ubuntu Linux on /dev/sda5 or Win XP on /dev/sda1.
My second HD which Linux recognizes as /dev/sdb, has a Win XP boot sector and Win XP in one partition.
Normally I boot off /dev/sda using GRUB, and from Linux I can mount and have access to /dev/sdb - that works well. Occasionally however, I need to boot the separate Win XP system on the second HD, and to do that I switch the boot drive in the BIOS, but lately that is getting to be a bit tedious.
Initially I though to give the additional boot choice to GRUB, I simply had to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and point to the second HD (where /dev/sdb = hd1 in GRUB speak). Unfortunately, when I select the new choice, it simply boots Win XP off the first HD.
I'm confident GRUB does look at the first partion on hd1 as expected as I can induce an error by having hd1 disconnected, or write silly partion numbers into menu.lst. So if it does in fact find the first partion on hd1, why doesn't it boot? Why does it default to WinXP on hd0?
I have diligently tried physically swapping SATA drive cables and playing with bios switching and have messed about a fair bit with menu.lst to make sure I have drive and partition numbers right, but all to no avail. I have also tried changing rdisk(0) in boot.ini to rdisk(1) on the second drive when it is not the boot drive.
I'm afraid the only other thing I can think of is that the second hard drive requires a Linux boot sector if I am going to boot it up from GRUB, but somehow that doesn't make sense. Surely GRUB can work across physically separate drives, so I'm open to other ideas first.
While installing with a separate /boot partition I cannot get two distinct copies of ubu installed on one machine and be able to choose between them. Each is installed on a different hard drive. x64 versions. I've had this issue both ways:
Stepsinstall mythbuntu install ubuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause ubuntu to boot
Stepsinstall ubuntu install mythbuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause mythbuntu to boot Grub 2 is so unfriendly for fixing these things. I don't know where to make changes. Ok, Grub 2 is very powerful, maybe it's the lagging documentation, or lack of tutorials that is the problem. But I don't know how to fix this. Do I start over without the /boot partition? Do I bail on ubu?
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.
To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.
However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.
I have Ubuntu 11.04 on 1TB HDD and Win 7 on another 1TB HDD. Right now I have to unplug a SATA cable to get to boot into one or the other. What is the best way to be able to pick. I don't care which OS I do it in or which is the primary, if there has to be one. I have an MSI mobo.
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.o do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press en
