Strange but big dual boot problem

[mcarrigan]

I don't know what I have done, if i did my volumes wrong or what, but here I go...I shrank my Win7 partion to 75GB created another 75GB vol and made it root and installed Ubuntu 10.4 there. Now here is the problem, after the reboot from the install, loaded Ubuntu just fine. Did a restart into Win7 to check and that was fine...THEN rebooted to go back to Ubuntu Grub never loaded, it never gave me the option to pick an OS, just sat there at a curser. So I reloaded Ubuntu, just deleted the Vol that I installed it in before and went through the whole thing. This time after the reboot went into Ubuntu just fine again. then I rebooted again and the loader came up fine so I went back into Ubuntu this time. Then I rebooted again back to Win7, BUT when I rebooted again, no Grub. This time just as one last check, reloaded again and rebooted and shutdown multi times and as long as I only went into Ubuntu it is fine but as soon as I go to Win7 and restart, I lose Grub...??????

[darkod]

Do you have HP or Dell?

[mcarrigan]

Dell studio 15, brand new

[darkod]

I think you have been hit by this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1475646

The last post by oldfred has few links to read.

[mcarrigan]

Ok, so i followed the instruction here in:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/bootinfoscript/index.php?title=Boot_Problems:Windows_Writes_To_MB R
Solution #2 so I could put an older version of grub and see if that works. I'm having a problem entering the correct info to get Windows to load. This is what I have in grub:

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-21-generic
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-21-generic (recovery mode)
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, memtest86+
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

title Windows 7
root (hdY,Z)
map (hd0) (hd3)
map (hd3) (hd0)
chainloader +1

And when I try to load Windows it says it cannot be found (sorry forgot actual wording). Windows is located on hd3.

Thanks for the help!

[darkod]

Ok, so i followed the instruction here in:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/bootinfoscript/index.php?title=Boot_Problems:Windows_Writes_To_MB R
Solution #2 so I could put an older version of grub and see if that works. I'm having a problem entering the correct info to get Windows to load. This is what I have in grub:

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-21-generic
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-21-generic (recovery mode)
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-21-generic root=UUID=a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-21-generic

title Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, memtest86+
uuid a3446b99-c3d8-4b71-abf7-94b463170523
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

title Windows 7
root (hdY,Z)
map (hd0) (hd3)
map (hd3) (hd0)
chainloader +1

And when I try to load Windows it says it cannot be found (sorry forgot actual wording). Windows is located on hd3.

Thanks for the help!

Sometimes you need in the windows entry the command:

makeactive

only I don't remember whether before the map commands or before chainloader.

Also, you could post the results of the boot info script which will show us more. Instructions here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8844901&postcount=4

[mcarrigan]

Still didn't work, here is the actual message:

Error 23: error while parsing number

Press any key to continue...

[oldfred]

What partition is your windows in
root (hdY,Z)

and for window 7 rootnoverify often works better than just root.
rootnoverify (hdX,0)

Y is the drive and Z is the partition. In old grub partition count starts at 0 so sdd1 will be (hd3,0). sdd2 (hd3,1) etc.
Both grub and grub2 count drives from 0.

Post the boot_info script if you need more help.

If by third drive you mean sdc then it is (hd2,0) etc

[mcarrigan]

Well, I appreciate the help with trying to get Windows mapped back into the grub boot list but I was still not getting it so I backed up and went a different rout. I still needed to fix an un-allocated disk space issue so i reloaded Ubuntu again then went to Windows and stopped the programs that were righting to the MBR and all works now...now my unallocated space issue, huh...but that's for another post. Thanks