Dual Boot Trouble (Newbie)

[mwh2ooo]

Hi, this is my first post. I'm a completely new to Linux, so I appreciate any help. I have a Dell e1505. I partitioned my hard drive into 3 partitions (through my windows install), one for Windows (~40gb), one for data (~10gb) and one for Linux (~50gb). I installed windows media center first, then installed ubuntu 8.04LTS Desktop. Under the Ubuntu install, I reformatted the Linux partition into 2. One for swap that is 4gb and root that is the rest (in ext3 format).

When I get to the Grub menu, windows doesn't show up as an option. Here is what I saw I lot of people posting:

michael@michael-laptop:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 98.5 GB, 98522403840 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 11978 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe686f016

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 498 4000153+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 * 6375 10581 33792727+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 10582 11977 11213370 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda4 499 6374 47198970 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 10582 11977 11213338+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

I have tried editing the grub menu, but to no avail. I'm not really completely sure how to edit, but there was no windows option in the grub list file.

I really appreciate any help, thanks in advance.

[meierfra.]

Did you try:

title Window XP
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

for your windows item?


What kind of error messages did you get when you tried to boot Windows?

Does the grub menu appear at boot up?
If not change "timeout 3" to "timeout 10" and "hiddenmenu" to "#hiddenmenu" in menu.lst

What used to be in the space which is now occupied by swap?

Post your boot.ini:


sudo mkdir /Windows
sudo mount -t ntfs /dev/sda2 /Windows
cat /Windows/boot.ini

[mwh2ooo]

The GRUB menu comes up. The error I get with that setup in GRUB is "NTLDR is missing."

The swap used to be a partition I created under the windows installer. I made one 50 gig partition with windows. Then in the linux install, deleted that partition and used the free space to make swap and the root partition.

I tried the boot commands, but there is no boot.init. This probably seems silly? Am I supposed to have a boot file in windows? I apologize if this is some simple mistake; I'm still very much a beginner.

Also, is there something I need to do to unmount the partition? Thanks a lot for your help thus far.

[meierfra.]

Its boot.ini (not boot.init) .

[mwh2ooo]

Sorry, typo when I was posting, but I entered it correctly in terminal.

[meierfra.]

Am I supposed to have a boot file in windows?

Yes, grub cannot boot Windows by itself. Grub just turns the control over to the windows partition.

[meierfra.]

I'm afraid that the booting information for XP was on the partition you deleted. This link might help you to fix the problem:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=922809&sd=RMVP

[mwh2ooo]

When I installed ubuntu did I mess up my windows partition or is there a place where I can download a new boot.ini?

[meierfra.]

Actually before you do that you might try to locate boot.ini by double clicking on the icon for the Windows partition in "Computer->Places".

[meierfra.]

When I installed ubuntu did I mess up my windows partition or is there a place where I can download a new boot.ini?

boot.ini itself isn't really the problems (you could recreate it yourself).But there are other boot files which probably are also missing "ntldr" is one of them. They are available on the web. I would find a link for you, but I'm out of time right now. I'll check back tomorrow.

[mwh2ooo]

Yeah, I did I search on that partition and nothing was found.

Okay. I just did a fixboot through the windows recovery console. Should it be using root hd(0,2) in GRUB? When I tried that with the fresh boot files and hd(0,2), I get "Starting up..." and then nothing happens.

This time I added the line makeactive to the GRUB list. Now I get "error 12: Invalid device requested."

[meierfra.]

Should it be using root hd(0,2) in GRUB?
No, it needs to be "root (hd0,1)" Grub starts counting at 0. So (hd0,1) is the second partition on the first hard drive.


Here is page which has the missing files and also helps you rebuild your "boot.ini":

http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

[mwh2ooo]

I reinstalled Windows then Ubuntu (through the live version) and GRUB was fine. Thanks so much for all the help.