Dual boot dead

[lgastmans]

After a recent upgrade of my 12.04 installation, my windows does not boot up anymore. Part of the message is:

"Could not read from the selected boot disk.
Check boot path and disk hardware."

My hard disks:
sda - 300 GB: Movies
sdb - 1 TB: sdb1 - Music, sdb2 - Windows XP, sdb3 - Win Data and sdb4 - Ubuntu 12.04 root

I have tried running the Boot Repair utility that is available, and that has not solved the issue, actually now it is even worse in that before the boot menu even appears I get the following message:

Error: no device connected.

I then press enter and it boots Ubuntu directly, and the boot menu flashes by without stopping

Desperate for some help, scared to try further with Boot Repair.

And I have also tried running d:\bootcfg /repair from the console after booting up with the Windows Installation CD.

HELP!

[daslinkard]

After a recent upgrade of my 12.04 installation, my windows does not boot up anymore. Part of the message is:

"Could not read from the selected boot disk.
Check boot path and disk hardware."

My hard disks:
sda - 300 GB: Movies
sdb - 1 TB: sdb1 - Music, sdb2 - Windows XP, sdb3 - Win Data and sdb4 - Ubuntu 12.04 root

I have tried running the Boot Repair utility that is available, and that has not solved the issue, actually now it is even worse in that before the boot menu even appears I get the following message:

Error: no device connected.

I then press enter and it boots Ubuntu directly, and the boot menu flashes by without stopping

Desperate for some help, scared to try further with Boot Repair.

And I have also tried running d:\bootcfg /repair from the console after booting up with the Windows Installation CD.

HELP!
Personally I would say forget Windows and move solely over to Linux....but I know we cannot always have what we want....One option you can try is as follows:


Start the computer by using your Windows XP CD-ROM. Press any key to boot from the CD.
After the setup files are finished loading press R to repair using Recovery Console.
When you are in the recovery console, select the installation to log on to (usually number 1), and then press ENTER.
Login to the Administrator account by typing the password for this account, and then press ENTER.
At the recovery console command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

For Uni-Processor systems: expand <cd-drive>:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ <hd-drive>:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
For Multi-Processor systems: expand <cd-drive>:\i386\ntkrnlmp.ex_ <hd-drive>:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Note In these two commands, the <cd-drive> placeholder represents the drive letter of your CD drive, and the <hd-drive> placeholder represents the drive letter of the hard disk on which windows is installed.
If you receive a prompt to overwrite the file, press Y.
Type exit, and press ENTER at the command prompt.

**Have you thought about doing a clean install of both Windows & Ubuntu?

[oldfred]

Post the link to the BootInfo report so we can see what issues you have.

Boot Repair -Also handles LVM, GPT, separate /boot and UEFI dual boot.:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
You can repair many boot issues with this or 'Create BootInfo' report (Other Options) & post the link it creates, so we can see your exact configuration and diagnose advanced problems.

[lgastmans]

Hi All,

Thank you both for the quick response. I had to struggle a bit with my setup here and therefore took a while to post back.
To make a long story short, I formatted the Windows partition and re-installed it - in the end the quickest way to set things right given my limited knowledge...
And, yes, I would love to work in Linux 100% of the time, but I have clients for whom I maintain Visual Foxpro and Delphi apps, believe it or not. So Linux 90% of the time...

Thanks for the support - much appreciated.

One more question, though:

I inserted a third hard disk and installed Windows on to this new hard disk. Since then, however, GParted does not display the partitions of the hard disk that has the Linux operating system on it, and that HAD the previous windows partition on it. I would like to retrieve the Windows partition...

These "invincible" partitions show up in Nautilus. And when I boot from the GParted CD that I once created, the same problem occurs.

Any suggestions?

[oldfred]

Is your gparted disk recent?

Ubuntu liveCD also has recent copies of gparted.

Does BIOS show all three drives.

Are you sure you installed Windows to the new drive? Windows may install to one drive but put boot partitions on whatever drive BIOS says is the boot drive.

[darkod]

In terminal take a look at what parted says for the disks with:
sudo parted -l (small L)

[rc0370]

Personally I would say forget Windows and move solely over to Linux....but I know we cannot always have what we want....One option you can try is as follows:


Start the computer by using your Windows XP CD-ROM. Press any key to boot from the CD.
After the setup files are finished loading press R to repair using Recovery Console.
When you are in the recovery console, select the installation to log on to (usually number 1), and then press ENTER.
Login to the Administrator account by typing the password for this account, and then press ENTER.
At the recovery console command prompt, type the following command, and then press ENTER:

For Uni-Processor systems: expand <cd-drive>:\i386\ntoskrnl.ex_ <hd-drive>:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
For Multi-Processor systems: expand <cd-drive>:\i386\ntkrnlmp.ex_ <hd-drive>:\Windows\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Note In these two commands, the <cd-drive> placeholder represents the drive letter of your CD drive, and the <hd-drive> placeholder represents the drive letter of the hard disk on which windows is installed.
If you receive a prompt to overwrite the file, press Y.
Type exit, and press ENTER at the command prompt.

**Have you thought about doing a clean install of both Windows & Ubuntu?
I have the same problem after installing Ubuntu 12.04.1 from a CD along side Windows Vista. I can no longer boot up into Windows Vista even when I tell it to. It starts to go to Windows Vista and then it reboots and goes into Ubuntu. Any suggestions?

[oldfred]

@rc0370
Welcome to forums. Boot issues are almost always unique. Please start your own thread and post the link to BootInfo report as shown in post #3.

[lgastmans]

@rc0370: Try the Boot Repair CD, it has done a lot of good work for me in the past, and in case it does not do the job, then post the URL that it gives at the end to this forum...

@darkod: This is what "sudo parted -l" gives

Model: ATA ST3320620AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 320GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 320GB 320GB primary ntfs boot


Error: Can't have overlapping partitions.

Model: ATA ST500DM002-1BD14 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 52.4GB 52.4GB primary ntfs
2 52.4GB 500GB 448GB primary fat32


I see an error in this listing "overlapping partitions"... Deleting the partition with the Windows install CD did this?

@oldfred: yes, all three drives show up in BIOS, and as you can see above, the new Windows install is on sdc

This is what "sudo fdisk -l" gives:


Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb972df94

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 625141759 312570848+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders, total 1953525168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0006c1a4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 716802047 358400000 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 819202048 952322047 66560000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb3 952322048 1953523711 500600832 5 Extended
/dev/sdb4 1941555200 1953523711 5984256 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb5 952324096 1933211647 490443776 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 1933213696 1941551103 4168704 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc8f1c8f1

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 63 102398309 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.
/dev/sdc2 102400000 976773119 437186560 b W95 FAT32

[oldfred]

Your sdb4 is inside the extended partition. That cannot be. sdb4 must be a primary not a logical. It probably should just be sdb7. Since it is a swap it might be easier just to delete it, but you may have to update fstab with the correct swap UUID.

But most partition tools do not work on invalid partition tables.

Backup partition table to text file & save to external device.
sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sdb > PTsdb.txt

Lets try this first:

You can reorder the partition with fdisk, anything after # is comment, do not type:
sudo fdisk /dev/sdb
x # enter expert mode
f # fix partition table
r # return
p # to print
v # to verify partition
#if ok
w # write the changes to disk
q # quit

[lgastmans]

@oldfred: Thanks for the input - when I saw your message it was clear that I had a "partition mess".

I decided to wipe backup, wipe out all the partitions, and start anew. So right now I am back on a fresh install of Ubuntu and Windows. Feels good.

Again, many thanks for taking the time to respond!

oops, typo in previous message. Should read "I decided to backup my data, wipe out..."

:-)