This is a solved problem I want to share, showing everything in one place.
After successfully booting my Samsung netbook NC10 into wubi-installed Ubuntu 12.10 Linux many times, one day it started failing and dumping me into Busybox with an (initramfs) prompt. After 2 days of Googling and trial and error, the following steps are what it took to repair my broken system.
0 I think maybe the problem was caused when I updated Windows XP. The updates called for a reboot of Windows. But instead of immediately rebooting into XP I absently booted into wubi Ubuntu. Thereafter Ubuntu was trashed. XP remained OK and finished the upgrade normally when I returned.
1 The answers that worked are here:
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5004
2 If you don't already have one, make a live Linux USB stick. Staying with Ubuntu,
2a Download the appropriate .iso file from ubuntu.com
2b Check the md5 sum against the one here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes
I did this in Windows using md5sum.exe from etree.org (it's free). I had to download the .iso file a second time to get the right hash.
2c Download a live stick burner that works in Windows. Ubuntu recommends the one at pendrivelinux.com
2d Burn the stick. NOTE: I had to check the "format" box. Step 3 would not work without formating the stick. If necessary adjust your bios to allow booting from USB.
3 Boot into the stick. Select "try", not "install" If it's Ubuntu, enter "terminal" in the ridiculous Unity search field to get a command line.
4 Then in order, (from the neosmart.net thread)
4a Find which drive/partition has the wubi files:
sudo fdisk -l
4b Make a mount point for it:
sudo mkdir /win
4c Mount it. In my case it was sda3 so
sudo mount /dev/sda3 /win
4d Make another mount point:
sudo mkdir /vdisk
4e Mount the wubi file:
sudo mount -o loop /win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /vdisk
4f In my case command 4e failed so run fsck:
sudo fsck /win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk
5 fsck worked and worked and worked some more but eventually got things squared away. Ignoring step 4e, I rebooted without the stick and all was well again.
Adv Reply
Bookmarks