kaoD
September 9th, 2009, 03:39 PM
Hello. I have a very strange problem. I used to have a dual boot with Windows XP and Vista, but I decided to remove Vista and switch to dual XP+Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu, formatting Vista's partition in the process, and installing Ubuntu over it. No problem at all. GRUB was correctly installed and I could dual boot, but I had a little drawback: GRUB kept Vista's bootloader in the list, and I wanted XP's bootloader, so I decided to reinstall XP's bootloader with the install CD, and then reinstall Ubuntu.
I had some problems installing WinXP because my SATA driver's aren't included in XP's install CD and I have no floppy drive, so I switched my BIOS to IDE Compatibility mode (I suppose it emulates IDE), letting the XP install CD restore XP's bootloader without SATA drivers. It worked, I rebooted, XP started fine and switching back to AHCI didn't break anything, so I just had to reinstall GRUB and everything would be fine... but it didn't go well. Now, when I try to reinstall Ubuntu using the LiveCD, during the installation my drive is shown as if it were completely blank (Without any format), but XP is fine with the partitioning. GParted shows the same problem, 931.00 unallocated GB... but surprisingly I can mount and even browse those partitions! fdisk lists my partitiones fine too:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4f7b4f7a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 106411 854746326 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 106412 121601 122013675 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 121353 121601 2000092+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 106413 121351 119997486 83 Linux
# This is an old ATA drive
Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x49664965
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 14594 117218712 42 SFS
(Weird partition numbering anyways...)
I tried reinstalling GRUB from the LiveCD, but it didn¡t work either:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For
the first word, TAB lists possible command
completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,5)
grub> root (hd0,5)
root (hd0,5)
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+17 p (hd0,5)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... failed
Error 22: No such partition
Is there any way to fix this, or I am stuck with WIndowsXP forever?
Thank you :)
I had some problems installing WinXP because my SATA driver's aren't included in XP's install CD and I have no floppy drive, so I switched my BIOS to IDE Compatibility mode (I suppose it emulates IDE), letting the XP install CD restore XP's bootloader without SATA drivers. It worked, I rebooted, XP started fine and switching back to AHCI didn't break anything, so I just had to reinstall GRUB and everything would be fine... but it didn't go well. Now, when I try to reinstall Ubuntu using the LiveCD, during the installation my drive is shown as if it were completely blank (Without any format), but XP is fine with the partitioning. GParted shows the same problem, 931.00 unallocated GB... but surprisingly I can mount and even browse those partitions! fdisk lists my partitiones fine too:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4f7b4f7a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 106411 854746326 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 106412 121601 122013675 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 121353 121601 2000092+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 106413 121351 119997486 83 Linux
# This is an old ATA drive
Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x49664965
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 14594 117218712 42 SFS
(Weird partition numbering anyways...)
I tried reinstalling GRUB from the LiveCD, but it didn¡t work either:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For
the first word, TAB lists possible command
completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,5)
grub> root (hd0,5)
root (hd0,5)
grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 17 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+17 p (hd0,5)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... failed
Error 22: No such partition
Is there any way to fix this, or I am stuck with WIndowsXP forever?
Thank you :)