11.10 dual boot with 11.10

[Dremel70]

I know that this doesn't sound right. My initial upgrade to 11.10 didn't take and my computer would lock up during the reboot.

I pulled the hard drive and did a data recovery hoping to save years of photos and lots of work. I found most but not all the files I was hoping to save.

I then downloaded 11.04 and tried to reinstall it. I was asked if I wanted to dual boot the two operating systems or if I wanted to overwrite 11.10.

I figured that maybe 11.10 just needed to be repaired so I canceled the 11.04 before it started to actually install. I then downloaded 11.10 and when I booted from the USB I had the option to install it beside the current 11.10, upgrade to 11.10 from 11.10 (I didn't have to the option to use this one), overwrite the current 11.10 (loose every file and document), or cancel. I chose to dual boot.

My problem is that I do not get the option when it boots to choose which 11.10. Is there a way to search the hard drive for the files left behind on the other 11.10? If not then I'm just going to reinstall it once again and overwrite everything to maximize my disk space.

Thank any of you in advance for your help.

[Starfleet]

Hi Dremel,

You should be ok if you run the command...

sudo update-grub

Do this once you have booted to your desktop in 11.10. Open a Terminal and type, or copy and paste the above command into the terminal. It will ask for your password. Once the password is entered, press enter. This should fix your problem and you will have access to both your operating systems.

[oldfred]

If old install is not bootable, it may not be found. But you might be able to chroot into it and run a full set of repairs/updates and make it work.

Methods/instructions on chroot. You may not need the reinstall grub commands.

drs305 chroot to purge & reinstall grub2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1581099
kansasnoob- full chroot one line version with &&---- change sda3 to your install
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=8068512&postcount=10

#Then run whatever other commands needed - no sudo needed if chroot (maybe good to run "df- H" and "cat /etc/issue" to be certain #you mounted the correct partition).
#Commands once in chroot:
#if not chroot use: sudo -i
#houseclean
apt-get autoclean # only removes files that cannot be downloaded anymore (obsolete)
apt-get clean
#refresh
apt-get update #resync package index
apt-get upgrade #newest versions of all packages, update must be run first
#would upgrade you to the latest kernel in the repositories
#dist-upgrade is also able to remove existing packages if required
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a

You may need to install other packages if missing:
# reinstall desktop
apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
or the grub uninstall/reinstall in drs305's chroot above.

#reinstall kernel:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-image
sudo update-grub

sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc