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View Full Version : [SOLVED] Grub Rescue Error & Windows XP Home Edition



Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 12:54 PM
I tried to install Ubuntu 10.10 and now I'm getting a "grub rescue>" when I reboot. I just want to get back my Windows now. Please help!

drs305
January 9th, 2011, 01:15 PM
I tried to install Ubuntu 10.10 and now I'm getting a "grub rescue>" when I reboot. I just want to get back my Windows now. Please help!

Without having the complete picture, it's likely you can restore the Windows bootloader from the LiveCD by running these two commands. Don't pay attention to the messages generated by the installation commands, these are the only two commands you need to run:

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

If you installed Ubuntu within Windows it is called Wubi and you should go to this site created by Rubi1200 to repair your boot files so you can have Windows and Ubuntu options.
Wubi Megathread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1639198)


If you don't get Windows back or want to regain Ubuntu, post the contents of the RESULTS.txt generated by running the boot info script from this site. Post it in the Wubi thread if that is the type of installation you have:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 01:52 PM
Without having the complete picture, it's likely you can restore the Windows bootloader from the LiveCD by running these two commands. Don't pay attention to the messages generated by the installation commands, these are the only two commands you need to run:

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr

If you installed Ubuntu within Windows it is called Wubi and you should go to this site created by Rubi1200 to repair your boot files so you can have Windows and Ubuntu options.
Wubi Megathread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1639198)


If you don't get Windows back or want to regain Ubuntu, post the contents of the RESULTS.txt generated by running the boot info script from this site. Post it in the Wubi thread if that is the type of installation you have:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net


First, thank you so much for trying to help me! I've been looking through the internet for some sort of help, but to no luck. What I tried to do was dual-boot Ubuntu. I have a 2 TB External Hard Drive so I used the Ubuntu LiveCD. I have a Windows XP Home Edition Desktop computer with a 40 GB Hard Drive. So I partitioned the 2 TB External Hard Drive with Ext4 and also made a Swap Area. I am officially freaking out at this point because I'm afraid I totally messed up my desktop computer. I'm going to try your suggestions now. Will let you know if it works in a bit.

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 02:02 PM
Thank you, thank you, thank you so so very very much!!! It works! I've gotten back Windows. That was such an easy fix. I cannot thank you enough. I was going nuts for 2 days trying to get back my Windows! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

drs305
January 9th, 2011, 03:32 PM
You are most welcome.

If you would like to get the ability to dual boot and also use Ubuntu please run the boot info script and post the contents of RESULTS.txt. The link to the script is in my first post.

Especially since you have Windows and Ubuntu on separate drives we can set it up so you can dual boot, and if you ever have problems with the Grub2 bootloader you can revert to strictly Windows (without the troubles you experienced).

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 04:10 PM
You are most welcome.

If you would like to get the ability to dual boot and also use Ubuntu please run the boot info script and post the contents of RESULTS.txt. The link to the script is in my first post.

Especially since you have Windows and Ubuntu on separate drives we can set it up so you can dual boot, and if you ever have problems with the Grub2 bootloader you can revert to strictly Windows (without the troubles you experienced).

I would definitely like to try dual-booting again. So do I put the LiveCD and then run the script from the Terminal after choosing Try Ubuntu? Just to be clear.

kansasnoob
January 9th, 2011, 04:17 PM
I would definitely like to try dual-booting again. So do I put the LiveCD and then run the script from the Terminal after choosing Try Ubuntu? Just to be clear.

Yes. The external drive also needs to be plugged in.

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 04:26 PM
Yes. The external drive also needs to be plugged in.

Question: My 2TB External Hard Drive that I'll be using for the installation has two partitions, one of which I would like to use for Ubuntu, is it okay to have the hard drive already partitioned or should I delete that volume?

drs305
January 9th, 2011, 04:34 PM
Question: My 2TB External Hard Drive that I'll be using for the installation has two partitions, one of which I would like to use for Ubuntu, is it okay to have the hard drive already partitioned or should I delete that volume?

Yes, it can be partitioned. In fact, many users prefer to partition the hard drive first so they can control the process of where Ubuntu is installed. If you already have the partition(s) when you get to the partitioning step of the installation you would select the bottom option to manually select the partitions.

At that point you would select the partition, designate it as / in the mountpoint tick box, and select the formatting type.

You might also wish to create a small partition for use as swap. The size depends on the amount of RAM you have, but generally about 2Gb is sufficient.

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 04:38 PM
Yes, it can be partitioned. In fact, many users prefer to partition the hard drive first so they can control the process of where Ubuntu is installed. If you already have the partition(s) when you get to the partitioning step of the installation you would select the bottom option to manually select the partitions.

At that point you would select the partition, designate it as / in the mountpoint tick box, and select the formatting type.

You might also wish to create a small partition for use as swap. The size depends on the amount of RAM you have, but generally about 2Gb is sufficient.

That's what I did before and it turned out to be problematic. Okay, so I'm checking my External Hard Drive in Windows Disk Manager and the partition (F:), that was used, now says RAW and is at 40 GB when I allocated 100GB. Any ideas on what happened there?

kansasnoob
January 9th, 2011, 04:40 PM
Question: My 2TB External Hard Drive that I'll be using for the installation has two partitions, one of which I would like to use for Ubuntu, is it okay to have the hard drive already partitioned or should I delete that volume?

If Ubuntu is already installed on that drive we should be able to install grub to the mbr of that external drive which will make it bootable. That way if the external is plugged in you'll be able to boot either Ubuntu or Windows using grub, but if you reboot with the external drive unplugged Windows should just boot normally as though no Ubuntu existed.

The boot info script will give us a general idea of how things are partitioned/installed.

It might also come in handy to see the output of:


sudo parted -l

That's just because the script uses fdisk and it doesn't particularly list partitions in their actual order.

kansasnoob
January 9th, 2011, 04:44 PM
That's what I did before and it turned out to be problematic. Okay, so I'm checking my External Hard Drive in Windows Disk Manager and the partition (F:), that was used, now says RAW and is at 40 GB when I allocated 100GB. Any ideas on what happened there?

Windows won't properly "read" most Linux file systems. We need the output requested to see what's going on.

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 05:05 PM
Okay, I will have to run the script at a later time and post the results here later because when I recovered Windows I decided to reformat my External Hard Drive, because Windows wasn't picking it up. From all I've been reading, it seems that Windows doesn't play very nicely with Linux.

kansasnoob
January 9th, 2011, 06:18 PM
Okay, I will have to run the script at a later time and post the results here later because when I recovered Windows I decided to reformat my External Hard Drive, because Windows wasn't picking it up. From all I've been reading, it seems that Windows doesn't play very nicely with Linux.

Well, I suppose that you could say that "Windows likes to be the boss", but I've installed many dual-boots and multi-boots very successfully. There was no real reason to wipe that drive and start over.

Since you did, you'll now have to reinstall Ubuntu but you must first learn some basics and I'd begin here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p22.html

That provides a fairly good idea of how to use Gparted for partitioning, understanding Linux device designations, etc.

Now, I'd certainly expect that you'd have some questions specific to your installation scenario, so I'd suggest some planning in regards to how you'd really like to partition that huge drive.

PM me prior to trying again and I'll try to walk you through it in advance :D

I'd almost bet that you'll love Ubuntu, or one of it's derivatives. It's well worth learning the basics of partitioning and installation, it can even come in handy if you ever need to rescue data from an inoperable OS!

Shadius
January 9th, 2011, 06:49 PM
Well, I suppose that you could say that "Windows likes to be the boss", but I've installed many dual-boots and multi-boots very successfully. There was no real reason to wipe that drive and start over.

Since you did, you'll now have to reinstall Ubuntu but you must first learn some basics and I'd begin here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p22.html

That provides a fairly good idea of how to use Gparted for partitioning, understanding Linux device designations, etc.

Now, I'd certainly expect that you'd have some questions specific to your installation scenario, so I'd suggest some planning in regards to how you'd really like to partition that huge drive.

PM me prior to trying again and I'll try to walk you through it in advance :D

I'd almost bet that you'll love Ubuntu, or one of it's derivatives. It's well worth learning the basics of partitioning and installation, it can even come in handy if you ever need to rescue data from an inoperable OS!

Thank you very much for your help. I will be sure to message you when I'm ready to try and dual-boot again. However, I have another issue that hopefully you can help me with. I have another desktop that I installed Ubuntu on a long time ago, I don't even remember what version of Ubuntu it's running. Anyway, I just powered it up to try and install Ubuntu 10.10 on it and for some reason it's just not booting. I even tried to use the LiveCD and just install 10.10 but it said the installer crashed. How do I go about fixing this?

kansasnoob
January 10th, 2011, 11:51 AM
Thank you very much for your help. I will be sure to message you when I'm ready to try and dual-boot again. However, I have another issue that hopefully you can help me with. I have another desktop that I installed Ubuntu on a long time ago, I don't even remember what version of Ubuntu it's running. Anyway, I just powered it up to try and install Ubuntu 10.10 on it and for some reason it's just not booting. I even tried to use the LiveCD and just install 10.10 but it said the installer crashed. How do I go about fixing this?

If it will not boot either from the hard drive or from CD I'd almost suspect something hardware related. Are you even able to access the BIOS?

If so there's usually an option to display POST info rather than the system logo, that may display some useful info. You should also check and see how the boot priority is set up. I usually set mine to boot from CD first, USB second, and then hard drive.