damn please help guys

[cowcrusher]

Hey guys, I recently installed Ubuntu on my pc, it was the correct version for my cpu and everything and it runs fine. Only problem is now I can't access windows. Which is odd because i didn't erase windows since i installed ubuntu on a seperate hd, also in grub it lets me choose boot windows xp, just then it runs a hardware check and says loading vaio data recovery wizard (which is even weirder because I have a hd that use to be in a vaio but I don't have windows or ubuntu on it!) the data recovery wizard doesnt start but my computer crashes and I get a blue screen, if you want to know more of what it says just tell me and I'll crash my comp to find out Also now my 2 non-linux hard drives both have the files autoexec.bat, boot.ini , config.sys, io.sys, msdos.sys , ntdetect.com , ntldr In their root directory. Also I've tried booting just from my windows hard disk but it says error loading os. I was thinking about just getting vista and upgrading windows xp and formatting my hard drives and starting clean, just will that screw anything up even more? Or I could just try and erase all my everything and reinstall windows. Just last time i've done a windows reinstall my key wouldn't verify again. Please help, if you want more info just tell me.

 

[audiovoodoo]

Firstly.. Welcome to the Linux club. Secondly.. DON'T PANIC!!

Can you still boot up Unbutu correctly? It sounds like Grub has picked up the Viao system restore partition as being the location of your XP install and has set the flag to point to this. In order to work out just what is going on it would be good if we could see your present partition information then we can look at changing the grub config to point to the right location (providing its still there!).

Firstly lets get your partition information. We do this using the fdisk command.

Goto Application->Accessories->Terminal

When the terminal opens type the following commands:

[code:1:7513e1d07f]sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda > hda.txt[/code:1:7513e1d07f]

The sudo or 'SuperUser Do' just means run this command as Root. You will have to enter your password but this will be the same as the one you set during installation. This will output the partition info for hda (IDE Primary master) into a txt file called hda.txt in your home directory. If you then repeat the steps for any other hard drives in your system by changind the 'a' to b,c,d etc. eg:

[code:1:7513e1d07f]sudo fdisk -l /dev/hdb > hdb.txt[/code:1:7513e1d07f]

You get the idea.. If you could then paste the contents of the files produced we can see just what is going on. Also if you could paste the contents of the following file:

[code:1:7513e1d07f]/etc/grub/menu.lst[/code:1:7513e1d07f]

This is the grub config file and will allow us to see what is pointing at what. It will most likely be a one line change to menu.lst to fix it all.... providing you didn't wipe the XP partition by mistake... If you can't boot Ubuntu off of the HDD then you can do all the above from the LiveCD.

 

[cowcrusher]

hey man thanks for the reply, I managed to get xp working but not linux. I used the windows cd and I repaired the boot files. Now I guess I'll use the live cd and reinstall grub but this time put the right windows xp in grub list. right?

 

[audiovoodoo]

Pretty much... I'm not the grub king round here though but I'm sure Linux_0 or BM did a nice piece on this a few weeks back. It's almost certainly in one of the posts on the first page here. Have a look and see if you can find it. They might be along themselves shortly.

Glad to hear you immediate problem is resolved. Just be better to hear you've got that Linux goodness too