Madigan
November 5th, 2008, 05:08 AM
Hello Ubuntu Forums!
I just want to start by saying that I've spent the past two hours searching through these forums for help with this issue, but so far I haven't been able to find a solution.
First: The situation.
A friend of mine finally convinced me to try Linux last week and gave me a copy of an Ubuntu Live CD so I could try Ubuntu without actually installing it. I liked it a lot, but didn't want to stop using Windows XP, so I decided to try for a duel-boot setup. My PC has two hard drives, a 100 Gb one that I have XP installed on, and a 200 Gb one that I had partitioned into 2 parts and was using for storage and game installation.
So I decided the best course of action would be to clear out one of the two partitions on the 200 Gb drive and use that space to install and run Ubuntu. The installation went through successfully and I got Ubuntu up to speed with drivers and basic software. The trouble came when I tried to switch back to XP. I restarted my PC, hit ESC to bring up the GRUB menu, and saw that there was no option to boot up XP. I called my friend and he said that it was common for GRUB not to recognize an XP boot if it was on a different drive from where Ubuntu was installed. I was getting pretty freaked out still, as the last thing I wanted was for Ubuntu to affect my usage of XP in any way. I found a couple of examples on this forum of how to manually edit GRUB's menu.lst. Here's the bottom of my menu.lst:
## ## End Default Options ##
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
title Other operating systems:
root
title Windows XP Pro
root(hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
here's the results of running fdisk:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x963f104a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2 * 1 24320 195350368+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 5100 24320 154392651 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 1 486 3903700+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 487 5099 37053891 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdb: 100.2 GB, 100256292864 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12188 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc657c657
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12187 97892046 7 HPFS/NTFS
The first drive (sda) is the 200 Gb drive that used to have 2 NTFS partitions. You can see the 40 gigs or so that I deleted and turned into partitioned space for installing and running Ubuntu.
The second drive (sdb) is the 100 gig drive that I have XP installed on.
After editing my menu.lst and restarting my PC, I can now see the Windows XP boot in my GRUB menu, but when I select it the screen goes black and says "Starting up...", but does nothing else until I manually turn off the PC. I'm pretty sure that I didn't set up my menu.lst right, so any help with what should be there would be great.
Thanks in advance to those that would offer me their time and experience!
I just want to start by saying that I've spent the past two hours searching through these forums for help with this issue, but so far I haven't been able to find a solution.
First: The situation.
A friend of mine finally convinced me to try Linux last week and gave me a copy of an Ubuntu Live CD so I could try Ubuntu without actually installing it. I liked it a lot, but didn't want to stop using Windows XP, so I decided to try for a duel-boot setup. My PC has two hard drives, a 100 Gb one that I have XP installed on, and a 200 Gb one that I had partitioned into 2 parts and was using for storage and game installation.
So I decided the best course of action would be to clear out one of the two partitions on the 200 Gb drive and use that space to install and run Ubuntu. The installation went through successfully and I got Ubuntu up to speed with drivers and basic software. The trouble came when I tried to switch back to XP. I restarted my PC, hit ESC to bring up the GRUB menu, and saw that there was no option to boot up XP. I called my friend and he said that it was common for GRUB not to recognize an XP boot if it was on a different drive from where Ubuntu was installed. I was getting pretty freaked out still, as the last thing I wanted was for Ubuntu to affect my usage of XP in any way. I found a couple of examples on this forum of how to manually edit GRUB's menu.lst. Here's the bottom of my menu.lst:
## ## End Default Options ##
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
uuid afe94a3f-663c-4059-893a-bb26c7434656
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
title Other operating systems:
root
title Windows XP Pro
root(hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
here's the results of running fdisk:
Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x963f104a
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda2 * 1 24320 195350368+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 5100 24320 154392651 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 1 486 3903700+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda7 487 5099 37053891 83 Linux
Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/sdb: 100.2 GB, 100256292864 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12188 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc657c657
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12187 97892046 7 HPFS/NTFS
The first drive (sda) is the 200 Gb drive that used to have 2 NTFS partitions. You can see the 40 gigs or so that I deleted and turned into partitioned space for installing and running Ubuntu.
The second drive (sdb) is the 100 gig drive that I have XP installed on.
After editing my menu.lst and restarting my PC, I can now see the Windows XP boot in my GRUB menu, but when I select it the screen goes black and says "Starting up...", but does nothing else until I manually turn off the PC. I'm pretty sure that I didn't set up my menu.lst right, so any help with what should be there would be great.
Thanks in advance to those that would offer me their time and experience!