Installed Ubuntu alongside Windows Vista but cannot boot into Vista

[fathobbit14113]

I installed Ubuntu into my C drive with the option "install alongside windows" while windows was running and manually created a partition for Ubuntu. Now I have tried restarting my computer several times but cannot find the option to choose which OS to boot up. I need to get back to Windows to see all my files, please help?

[oldfred]

I am confused on how you installed. There is no along side from inside Windows. If in Windows you can install wubi which is just a file inside Window's NTFS partition. Or you install to a separate partition.

To see exactly what is where, post the link to the results.txt that the boot info script creates from boot repair.:

Yanni has created a easy way to download boot repair & run script:
HOWTO : easily create a Boot-Info summary
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11164270
Boot Repair:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

[fathobbit14113]

I guess what I meant was that the computer was on and running when I put the Ubuntu disk in and installed it. Then I chose the install alongside option.

[fathobbit14113]

http://paste.ubuntu.com/806688/ after following instructions this is what i was told (by the computer) to post to a forum.

[darkod]

What exactly happens when you start the computer?
Do you get the grub boot menu first or nothing at all, black screen?

Did you try running the cd in live mode to see if it works first? Black screen can mean video issue.

Otherwise the results don't show anything wrong. Nothing I can spot anyway.

[fathobbit14113]

When the computer starts up it goes straight to Ubuntu. When I installed it, it said it would give me the option to choose either Windows or Ubuntu whenever the computer turned on. I'm having trouble getting to Windows.

[darkod]

Hmmm, according to the results it located Vista correctly and it should show you a boot menu.
Also, are you aware you have a wubi install inside windows? Most people deinstall wubi before installing a dual boot.

Boot ubuntu and post the result of:
df -h

[oldfred]

Your sda1 looks larger than the normal 100MB boot/recovery partition, but it has wubi and does not have this file:
Vista/7 (with 7 the first two files are usually in a separate 100MB boot partition, but may all in one partition)
/bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe


Sometime script does not find winload.exe, do you have it in your sda1? or somewhere else on system. It is normally the c: drive.

[fathobbit14113]

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda5 138G 11G 120G 9% /
none 3.4G 688K 3.4G 1% /dev
none 3.4G 124K 3.4G 1% /dev/shm
none 3.4G 92K 3.4G 1% /var/run
none 3.4G 0 3.4G 0% /var/lock

[fathobbit14113]

Oldfred, I'm afraid I don't understand what you mean.. I don't know how to look for that file.

[oldfred]

From Ubuntu file browser Nautilus, can you click on sda1. It may just show as 400GB or whatever size it is. Then you can browse it and see if it has all your normal Windows files & folders.