New install will boot neither Windows nor Ubuntu

[darexx]

Largest contiguous space means that the installer will look at partitions that have data on them and will try to shrink the used partition, create a new one and install Ubuntu on that. Often the install can fail (especially in the case on WinXP) as a paging (ie swap) file is put towards the end of the partition.
More often than not its better to install Ubuntu (and its derivatives) with manual partitioning rather than guided. The system files should be given at least 10Gb, formatted as ext3 and mount point as / The swap partition has no formatting and should be a minimum of two times the ram memory in the PC.
Hope this is of use.

Thanks Kevbert that clears it up. I had suspected that it was something like that but wasn't sure.

This also explains what went wrong for rpaskudniak (although not how to fix it). Whereas he wanted to install into an empty partition he ended up installing into his XP partition with the resulting problems.

Using a manual install he should be able to install into the empty partition and at least get one working copy of UBUNTU (assuming that grub writes OK).

[rpaskudniak]

Gulp! That's what happened! I couldn't remember the exact quote of the prompts. I had been assured that it would issue warnings before messing with the Windows partition. Lawn fertilizer! as I now see.

OK, I will have to install Unbuntu again at a later date. In the meantime, my top priority is to get windows working again, with a correct partition size, not shrunk. When I am ready for that, I will share my scheme and aske for corrections.

Thanks for the help so far, Kevbert. Like the cat you just fed, I will be back for more.

-- Rasputin II

[rpaskudniak]

Kevbert,
thanks for the reference to supergrub. It opens a whole new can of worms. (But they're nice worms.)

My priority right now is to remove Ubuntu altogether and just get Windows working again. I will Try Ubuntu later, as I mentioned. If my flawed install has indeed shrunk my Windows partition, I will have to move my kid's media someplace else for protection so that I don't start with a full partition. (I'm backing it up now; I can access the windows files.)

I have found wiki documentation for what looks my exact problem:

How to boot Windows without problems., I had Linux and Windows in dual boot and then Windows no longer boots., I had both Ubuntu and Windows installed and now Windows boots just hangs.

I only hope the CD-booted Ubuntu I am now using works for burning CD's.

Wow! I'm all overdaplace this morning!

Thanks mucho!

-- Rasputin II

[rpaskudniak]

(Warning - long-winded post)

Kevbert & company,
as I write this, I am printing out the big doc you referred to in the URL:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzo...bDiskPage.html

However, I did take the time to join the supergrubdisk.org forum, and do some thinking out loud while reading Adrian15's replies to a shockingly high number of similar problems with Ubuntu 8.04. In the process, I have some output that might help Kevbert help my situation.

First, FWIW, here is the output of sfdisk -l:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo sfdisk -l

Disk /dev/hde: 24792 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/hde1 * 0+ 12748 12749- 102406311 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hde2 12749 24791 12043 96735397+ 5 Extended
/dev/hde3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hde4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/hde5 12749+ 24556 11808- 94847728+ 83 Linux
/dev/hde6 24557+ 24791 235- 1887606 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sda: 38913 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units = cylinders of 8225280 bytes, blocks of 1024 bytes, counting from 0

Device Boot Start End #cyls #blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 0+ 38912 38913- 312568641 7 HPFS/NTFS
end: (c,h,s) expected (1023,254,63) found (1021,254,63)
/dev/sda2 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda3 0 - 0 0 0 Empty
/dev/sda4 0 - 0 0 0 Empty


(I happen to have an additional, external hard drive, 320B, on a USB port, not involved in this ubuntu installation.)

In my most recent post on that forum, I manually typed in a "transcript" of a down & dirty sesison having booted from the SuperGrub CD. I think it might be relevant here. But first a preface:

My box is a Dell XPS-T500 500 mhz CPU, purchased in 1999. The BIOS is incapable or seeing past 137GB. This is a key point, I think.

In 2003 or so, I bought a 200GB hard drive, replaced the original 28GB drive and installed XP instead of the original Win-98. It was OK that it could not see the whole drive because I intended to install Linux on the latter 100GB. Using Partition Magic, I created a 100GB partition for windows and left the rest alone until this week.

Now, that transcript. I was trying to restore GRUB to the correct partition.

OK, I boot it and get the prompts to select:

ENGLISH ->
ADVANCED ->
Gnu/Linux (Advanced) ->
Fix Boot of Gnu/Linux ->
Manual Restore of GRUB in Hard DIsk (MBR) ->

Now I get a list with a heading:
Natural LINUX-IDE LINUX-SCSI GRUB HURD
1 HDA SDA (hd0) hd0

Well, that's only one possible row. I select it and get this list:

N IDE SCSI GRUB HURD TYPE OS
1 hda1 sda1 (hd0,0) hd0s1 HPFS/NTFS WINDOWS
5 hda5 sda5 (hd0,4) nd0s5 ex2fs UBUNTU 8.04 \n \l

Naturally, since I want the GRUB on the Ubuntu partition, I choose the second row, where N == 5.

I get a repeat of a display I saw earlier:

Natural LINUX-IDE LINUX-SCSI GRUB HURD
1 HDA SDA (hd0) hd0

Of course, I select the only row shown. Now I get:
Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeded maximum supported by Bios


CURSES! Foiled again!

There is an option to "fix boot of windows" but I am awaiting a complete read and advice from Adrian on its usage. But I am now more convinced that I should not install Ubuntu on the same hard drive, rather on a 120GB partition at the end of the external drive; no BIOS restriction there, I think.

I will get back to Y'all on the results of my quest. This is all still better than reinstalling Windows and all those apps I have installed as well.

Kevbert, thanks for the guidance so far. But the sheer number similar posts on the supergubdisk forum suggests to me that some installation kinks in 8.04 still need to be worked out.

-- Rasputin II

[meierfra.]

Just a couple of comments:

blocks of 1024 bytes,
#blocks Id System
102406311 7 HPFS/NTFS

This tells us that your windows partion is still 100GB. So the ubuntu installer did not touch the Windows Partition. I think there is a very high chance that you can rescue Windows.


Error 18 together with you old bios, does indeed mean that you will not be able to boot Ubuntu, unless you either reinstall ubuntu to a different location or at least create a separate boot partition. Although sometimes this problem can be solved by upgrading the Bios.


You might also see whether you can access your Windows partition from the Ubuntu Live CD. Go to Computer->Places and double click the icon for the Windows partition.

[rpaskudniak]

Thanks for the encouraging word, meierfra.

Yes, I know my data is still there. I have been using the file browser to back up my daughters's recent work to the secondary drive. (They are thoroughly p****d at me for this escapade. )

Has anyone used the "Fix boot of windows" in SGD? Please share your story here.

Also, I just saw a tidbit from Adrian15 in the SGD forum: In Super Grub Disk 0.9716 release he describes the following issue:

It seems that there are some firewalls or antivirus or securities policies that when booting into Windows delete the sectors just after the MBR, that's where usually grub's stage1_5 is stored.

This latest release, 0.9716, has a fix for that problem. (I had downloaded SGD 0.9677.) He has added a new option:

Choose Language & Help -> Linux -> Linux (Advanced) -> Fix Boot of Linux (GRUB)-> Manually restore grub to MBR (!NO stage1_5)

Since my intention is to remove Ubuntu from my machine completely (and make some diffent partitioning decisions before my next try) this is not immediately useful to me. I still need advice (and reading) on "Fix boot of Windows".

But my data does seem safe (albeit imprisoned) in the meantime, as long as I don't need to reinstall Windows.

-- Rasputin II

[rpaskudniak]

Greetings.

I have just posted this on the supergrubdisk forum, if with slightly different wording:
----
[non-]progress report:
I cannot use the acer "Recovery disks" [that I borrowed from my son] because the instructions clearly tell me that it will wipe my disk and install windows fresh. Not a desirable result.

OK, I am now copying the entire contents of my 104GB Windows partition to a new backup directory on the external drive. Kinda slow on a USB-1 bus (I said my machine is a dinosaur! ) but with the cp -pR command, it should get everything with time-stamps intact.... Well, not quite - some media files are getting errors e.g

cp: cannot stat `/media/disk/Documents and Settings/All Users/Documents/My Music/Keith Brion/Babes in Toyland The Red Mill/07 Eccentric Dance (Gavotte).wma': Input/output error

cp: cannot stat `/media/disk/Documents and Settings/Guest/Application Data/Real/RealPlayer/DRM': Input/output error

But I think these are tolerable.

OK, lacking better information, I think I will boot my original XP installation CD and run chkdsk -pr from the recovery console.

HMMmm... I see now that I could edit the boot.ini file with vi. Here are the contents:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\wubildr.mbr="Ubuntu"

Now, what can I change to get Ubuntu out of the picture and give Windows a monopoly on my machine (until my next try)?

Thanks much.

[rpaskudniak]

I have posted this in the supergrubdisk forum as well:

To follow up my my recent post about boot.ini:

My current, flawed boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\wubildr.mbr="Ubuntu"

Here is the boot.ini from my XP laptop:

[boot loader]

timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

The only difference here is the last line of the flawed boot.ini: the line

c:\wubildr.mbr="Ubuntu"

Empowered as I am with Ubuntu (booted from the CD), I can easily [make a copy of the flawed version and] edit the flawed version to remove that ubuntu line. I believe that will only get rid of the boot menu that includes ubuntu; the MBR is still damaged, a state I hope will change after I run

chkdsk -pr

from the recovery console.

The backup "cp -pr" is still running since 11:00 PM last night.

Thoughts?

[abn91c]

you may want to try this rescue cd if all else fails http://distrowatch.com/table.php?dis...n=systemrescue

[rpaskudniak]

Thanks abn,
I'm investigating that extensive site now.