No option for XP in grub after ubuntu 8.10 install

lol, yes avoid re-installing Xp. There's a few quick fixes that would totally solve this problem!

Basically you just need to use a text editor to write Xp into the menu, lol

Thats sounds more like it! ....less grief from wife about losing XP!

As I said I'm new to ubuntu, could you possibly post how to access the menu and what text to add???

To access the Xp partition from the Ubuntu you'll need to install "Samba" so go up to the top taskbar and click on

System - Administration - Synaptic Package Manager

it asks for your normal user password, not your SuperUser/Root one. Use either search tool to find Samba and right-click to install it. Then click on the "Apply" button and it'll connect to the internat and download Samba and all the "dependencies" that samba needs in order to run properly. Note that any packages with a green blob beside them are already installed on your machine and shouldn't need reinstalling or anything.

Now you should be able to see the Windows partition in the "Places" menu on the top taskbar - it'll be called something 'helpful' like "5.1Gb media" or something like that.

Good luck with this part :)

For the part about fixing your 'menu.lst' file in /boot/grub it would be helpful if you could do 2 things for us. First of all go up to the top taskbar and click on

Applications - Accessories - Terminal

into the terminal/command window/console type

cd /boot/grub
ls
sudo cp menu.lst menu.lst.260309
ls

not that the ls is a lower-case "LS", dir also works but unlike the Dos command ls typically more helpful and gives a colour-coded list of the files in the folder. After type the "sudo" command you'll probably be prompted for your normal user password again. The second "ls" command after entering your password should show that the "cp" command has created a CoPy of the menu.lst file - it's always a good plan to make a back-up like this before working on a crucial system-file!

Now just try typing into the same terminal console

gedit menu.lst

and copy all the chunks that don't have a # at the start of lines into here so we can have a look at what's going on with the menu. Then we'll hopefully be able to make some suggestions to tidy it up :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Ooops typo! Instead of

not that the ls is a lower-case "LS"

i meant

Note that the "ls" is a lower-case "LS"

The 2nd thing that would help us is if you go up to the top taskbar and click on

System - Administration - Partition Editor

guess which password? lol. Take care with this tool as we don't want to accidentally delete anything! For some reason the installer uses the wrong colours for the partitions. The right way is here in gparted. Windows green and linux blue with linux-swap as red because the swap only needs to be about twice as large as your Ram size or een less - if it's smaller than ram you probably wont be able to use the hibernate/sleep/suspend mode which is worth avoiding anyway. It would be good if you could copy the text info that's in the bottom pane into here so that we can suggest ways of tidying up the partitions a bit. It's not really necessary - all we really need is to know what the Xp partition is labelled, my guess would be "/dev/sda1" but it sounds like the installer has encouraged you to do things a little strangely. Not bad for a first attempt at linux tho!!

Congrats at getting this far. Please let me know if you need a bit more nudging in the right direction for getting all this info to us as i have kinda forgotten what it's like to be a noob although i've only been using linux for a few months. You'll learn fast too :)

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

Really all you need do is open a terminla console and type in

cd /boot/grub
sudo gedit menu.lst

and add something like

title Win Xp
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

to the beginning of the section that isn't commented out by # marks. The sudo command needs a password but gives you SuperUser rights which allows you to save the menu.lst file into the system folder where it belongs. The key is getting the numbers right in "root (hd0,0)" as the grub loader is meant to be better at communicating with the machine rather than being good at talking to humans. It starts all it's numbering at 0 rather than 1 and and uses numbers instead of letters. (0,0) is the main drive (master drive, sda) and then the first partition on the drive, the one linux calls sda1.

Hopefully we can help you sort out your partitions first tho?

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom

ok, during my lunch hour, I've managed to do the "sudo gedit menu.lst" and add the text as you described.

XP now appears in the grub list, but when I select it is says "starting up...." and nothing happens!!

Here is my partition table if it helps:

             Boot Start End Blocks ID System

/dev/sda1 * 1 12748 10239828+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 12749 14937 17583142+ 5 extended
/dev/sda5 12749 13964 9767488+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 13965 14937 7815591+ 82 Linux swap

Thing is I'm stuck at work and not at my home PC. To make things work my sagem Modem doesn't work with ubuntu. I need to get the drivers.

So I would appreciate any further thoughts??

I have a very strange idea about this issue (corrupted boot record I mean) but, first of all, could you paste the full content of your menu.lst file?

@ Crimer
You want the commented out items?!?!? lol

Everything

Ok, i'm assuming that this is such a new install that you don't have any data in there that you want saving. If you do then just copy it across to the Windows side but make sure there's no horrendously long names such as you only really get from saving web-pages.

Using Ubuntu as a Live Cd (ie without installing anything, just try the "Try Ubuntu without changing anything" option) open the partition editor and umount and delete sda6, sda5 and sda2! Ok i know that sounds shocking but there are a number of things we can straighten out and it seems a few things have gone wonky. The sizes seem all wrong in the partition table but i'll go with what you said earlier

Now first create a new Primary Partition immediately after the Windows partition and make it only about 2,048 Mb (hopefully that's at least over Ram size), this is the linux-swap and nudge it right up against the Windows partition, now that its a swap Windows will let it get closer. Next create the Primary Partition of file-system type ext3 (that doesn't mean an extended partition, just an unfortunate coincidence in naming conventions :( ) filling up the rest of the drive. This last partition should be at least 10Gb or 10,240 Mb! Ok, i know 8Gb is the real lower limit but you'll need to give it some elbow room realistically.

This should now allow you to istall Ubuntu properly using these guides and go through the "Manual Partitioning" which should be easy this time ;) Just remember to set the ext3 partition's "Mount Point" to / the root of the linux file-system.

Hopefully it should all work now and grub should find the Xp easily too although it sound like there might be some Windows problem going on that might take a bit of tweaking to fix.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I've just noticed your modem issue. If you're still at work please download and burn a Cd of Wolvix Cub
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

http://wolvix.org/get.php

It's only about 250Mb and should download fast if you avoid the torrents. Run as a LiveCd it should pickup on your modem better as it's Slackware based and a lot of work went into modems and stuff like that in Wolvix. Often if one branch of linux can't see a device another fork will pick it up more easily. Ubuntu is from the Debian fork/branch lol

Also try posting the Sagem issue as a new question in here so that people from the front desk with experience of that particular issue pick up on it (hopefully).
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Tom, thanks for your replies.

Back at home now!

To get XP working I followed some advice to do the following using the live CD

"sudo apt-get install lilo"
"sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr"

This sucessfully restored windows mbr allowing XP to load. I'm now trying to unmount and delete the partitions as your advice using the live CD. However in the partition editor the option to "umount" is greyed out and it won't delete sda2 sda5 or sda6 without unmounting them first!...any thoughts? I notice you suggest setting both partitions as primary...I set them up as logical could that be causing the issue??

At least now I can use XP. But I would like to get ubuntu working properly, i'll address the modem issue once I have successful dual boot.

Something that usually troubles me at about this point in a problem is - Ok, now everything is working as it shuld. Do i leave it there and maybe try again another day or do i press onward knowing i can get back to this point easily ;)

Thanks Tom

I'll try the "swap off" tomorrow (Friday) and let you know how I get on.

One other point that I forgot to mention was that in gparted I noticed that both sda5 and sda6 are contained within the extended partition sda2.... like two secondary folders within one main folder (if that makes sense!!).....is that how it should be???

Yes that's the whole reason for the Extended Partition, it's just a kind of bucket for holding extra partitions.

It started that drives were set with a limit of 4 partitions but then some people found an advantage with having more and developed the new "Extended Partition" type in order to be able to contain a lot more partitions.

It's this point about "secondary folders" type of thinking that made me notice that when i have OS and Swap on Primary Partitions instead of in an Extended Partition that sometimes quirky problems seem to evaporate. For data it really doesn't seem to matter at all and also sometimes a machine has plenty of Ram so i don't really need a swap partition, so it doesn't seem to matter then if it is in an "Extended Partition" as the only time i'll use it is when i use sleep/hibernate/suspend mode which i tend to avoid anyway. I've not tested my theory out enough times and on enough different setups so it could easily be purely my bias in thinking it could be an issue.

Nicely spotted! lol, i should have described it better earlier but i had 2 very similar threads at the same time and kept forgetting what had been said in one and not the other!

By the way, thanks for your Lilo answer, that definitely saved one chap that was in serious trouble!
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/65226

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Sorry for the delayed response on this one.

Thanks for your help Tom. I now have a successful dual boot.

Just for the record here is how...Using the live CD, I selected 'swap off' in partition editor which then allowed me to delete both partitions.
From then I did a fresh install of ubuntu creating, a 8GB swap partition & 10GB linux partition both as primary partitions, with the linux partition set as "/" mount point. The installer still didn't detect XP and offered no options to import setting from XP. When booting up the grub menu still showed no option for XP.. arghh!! So as before I had to edit the grub menu with the following:

cd /boot/grub
sudo gedit menu.lst

title Win Xp
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

This gave an option for XP in the grub menu which when selected...guess what?...it worked!! :)

So with a bit more tweaking to increase the countdown time on the grub menu, and to set XP as the default loading OS (makes my wife happy) I now have a successful dual boot.

Now if I could just get my USB modem to work!! but thats for another question

Thanks for your help.

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

Fantastic!! Excellent result, nicely done & congrats :D
Welcome to linux land, especially the Ubuntu corner of it :)

For the modem ...
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion
the front-desk because i don't have a clue :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)