dual boot help needed, windows not recognized!

[sneza]

Hi!
I tried finding some similar topic but I couldnt.
so here it goes:
I installed windows on my old desktop, and then i installed ubuntu 7.10 from a cd.
i had installed windows on the D partition of my HD.
After I installed ubuntu I couldnt find my windows in the grub menu.
I changed menu.lst to include windows as follows:

title Windows XP
root (hd0,4)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

I did this since my windows is on /dev/sda5

now when I tried going to windows it gives me error 12 invalid request or sth.
So I can only log on to ubuntu, and since I am using ADSL internet I can not set it up properly there :(
I am trying to set the computer working for my parents, but I guess formating everything was a bad idea :)

I am a beginner on ubuntu myself, so any help would be great!

[merlinus]

Open a terminal windows, and post results of:


sudo fdisk -l

It seems that xp is in a logical partition, however, and it is very difficult to run it from there.

[sneza]

sorry for my late reply. the output of the command sudo fdisk -l is the following:



Disk /dev/sda: 41.1 GB, 41110142976 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/tracks, 4998 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xab5eab5e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2 * 1 4998 40146403+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 3649 4998 10843843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 1 36 289075+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 37 1252 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 1253 3648 19245838+ b W95 FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order

[merlinus]

As I suspected, windows is installed in a logical partition. You can google for workarounds, but all are tricky. It wants to be in a primary partition.

You can try to use gparted to move and/or resize partitions to make this so, beginning with reducing the size of sda1 (the extended partition) to make room for a primary, but it may be best to start afresh, if you can back up important data..