Win XP missing in GRUB on Kubuntu 16.04

[stuck2]

Hi,

Updated my old laptop from Kubuntu 10.04 to 16.04(x64). Installation went well, 16.04 is running fine, but Win XP does not show up in GRUB.
sdb1 = Win XP
sdb2 = Lenovo Service partition
sdb3 = data
sdb4 = might be Lenovo Rescue & Recovery
sdb5 = 16.04
sdb6 = swap


1) tried
sudo update-grub but nothing changed
2) checked partitions, boot flag for Win XP is set
3) installed Boot-repair from the live-usb (sda1) and generated this report: removed => see message below

Now Boot-repair suggested to write grub2 to all MBRs.
Would this not overwrite the existing entry of Win XP on sdb1 ? Am I missing something ?

Any help to get Win XP in my grub menu is highly appreciated.

Thanks,
Red

[yancek]

sdb4 is actually and Extended partition which is simply a container for the logical partitions.
I don't see your boot.ini file which is the boot menu for the old xp. Could you check from Ubuntu to see if it exists. It usually, but not always shows in the boot repair output so hopefully it is still there. Did you also try running: sudo os-prober? Obviously your xp won't boot as there is no windows entry in the grub.cfg, myabe os-prober will show. Watch the output after you run the command. Did you run update-grub from Ubuntu installed on the hard drive?

[oldfred]

If os-prober has not found it then yancek's analysis of missing boot.ini is correct.
Grub does not use boot flag to know a bootable partition, but looks for boot files. With Windows XP it looks for both ntldr & boot.ini.

For what ever reason your flash drive is promoted to sdb. Your Windows boot.ini may have been set for first drive. Do you always have flash drive plugged in.

I found on several systems, not plugging drives into first SATA port or SATA0 and not skipping ports was important. Or on reboot flash drive would appear in location of missing unused SATA port renumbering all the drives. While UUID is used in many places you still use /dev/sdX in some places and then that changes.

Do not run Boot-Repair's auto fix. You do not want grub installed to flash drive. That should be considered an external drive which Boot-Repair would handle differently anyway.
Boot-Repair has advanced mode where you can choose operating system, and drive to install boot loader into. Only use that if needed.

[stuck2]

Thanks for your help.
Drives sda, sdb, sdc: I ran boot-repair from a live system (sda) and saved output to another usb-stick (sdc).
Running os-prober from command line did not give any output and update-grub produced this output:
stuck@Kub1604:~$ sudo os-prober
[sudo] password for stuck:
stuck@Kub1604:~$ sudo update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-47-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-47-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-31-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-31-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done

Today I ran boot-repair from my ubuntu installation and this is the first part of the output:

Boot Info Script cfd9efe + Boot-Repair extra info [Boot-Info 26Apr2016]


============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================

=> Grub2 (v2.00) is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks at sector 1 of
the same hard drive for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks
for (,msdos5)/boot/grub. It also embeds following components:

modules
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
fshelp ext2 part_msdos biosdisk
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

sda1: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: ntfs
Boot sector type: Windows 2000/XP: NTFS
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System: Windows XP
Boot files: /NTLDR /NTDETECT.COM

sda2: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Windows XP: FAT32
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files: /NTDETECT.COM

sda3: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Unknown
Boot sector info: No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
Operating System:
Boot files:

sda4: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: Extended Partition
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

sda5: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Boot files: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab
/boot/grub/i386-pc/core.img

sda6: __________________________________________________ ________________________

File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda __________________________________________________ ___________________
Disk /dev/sda: 298.1 GiB, 320072933376 bytes, 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
Disklabel type: dos

Partition Boot Start Sector End Sector # of Sectors Id System

/dev/sda1 * 63 146,815,199 146,815,137 7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS
/dev/sda2 614,401,200 625,136,399 10,735,200 12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda3 146,815,200 503,344,799 356,529,600 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda4 503,344,861 614,401,199 111,056,339 f W95 Extended (LBA)
/dev/sda5 503,344,863 606,024,719 102,679,857 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 606,024,783 614,401,199 8,376,417 82 Linux swap / Solaris


"blkid" output: __________________________________________________ ______________

Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/sda1 BA60C52B60C4EF67 ntfs Preload
/dev/sda2 3404-04F1 vfat SERVICEV001
/dev/sda3 AD2A-6438 vfat DATA
/dev/sda5 90151e74-0125-4af6-ad17-a12b53def267 ext4
/dev/sda6 swap


I did not see boot.ini on my Windows partition when checking from Ubuntu, so I guess you're right, it is missing. Not sure how this happened when installing Ubuntu on my pre-existing linux partition.

[stuck2]

Solution: Added the missing boot.ini-file.
After copying the boot.ini-file from my backup to the Windows system partition (aka C), os-prober found Windows and update-grub added Windows to the grub menu. Now I can choose between Ubuntu and Windows as before, Windows is running too.

Thank you yancek & oldfred !