Dual Boot no longer works

Asked by jbrandt04330

There are multiple problems, I think.

I am running an old HP Pavilion PC with WinXP. I had installed Ubuntu on this machine about a year and it worked fine as a "dual boot" -when I booted the machine I would get this screen that allowed me to choose between running Ubuntu (default) or Win98. I think this is "Grub" - yes?

Recently, I think the computer had some disk errors - Windows booted up the other day and suggested a restore, so I did that to a date last week. Now the machine boots directly to XP only; no Grub, no Ubuntu.

There are two CD's/DVDs, but only one works, the DVD ROM. There is also a 3.5" floppy (yeah, I know, ancient). I've changed the BIOS to boot off of the DVD-ROM.

I d/l the latest Ubuntu distro and burned it onto a DVD using my Win7 machine, but the file shows up as a WinZIP file and will not boot from the DVD player in the old PC.

I have also tried Wubi (on the burned DVD) which asked to unintall Ubuntu first - which I did - and then tried to reinstall from the DVD. It seemed to be doing this, but when then asked to reboot the machine to complete the reinstall. When I did this, it booted up as WinXP.

I have read through the other Q's but they are either 2-3 years old, or the responses are too confusing....I am a Linux newbie.

I love Ubuntu, but need to run it in the dual boot mode. Not sure if this is a hardware issue or a software issue. Any assistance will be appreciated. Thanks.

~j

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Ubuntu grub2 Edit question
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mycae (mycae) said :
#1

Yes, grub (grub2 in newer ubuntu versions) is the boot manager, and yes, a windows system restore will simply write over grub.

You can recover grub with a liveCD:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#2

The file appears to be a zip file because winzip etc can handle iso files. This should be completely ignored as an irritation. Simply md5 test the file then open the file with your burning app and burn it as slowly as possible.

You can then reinstate the bootloader.

Or if you delete the current install (this will destroy all data) then the new OS will be installed as well as the grub bootloader.

Revision history for this message
jbrandt04330 (jeb-jebswebs) said :
#3

My problem now is I cannot boot off of the CD. I've changed the BIOS to read the DVD-ROM but the "Live CD" - which is actually a DVD+R - will not boot.

Is there another way to reinstall Ubuntu?

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said :
#4

Try pressing F11 or F12 at boot and you should get a one time boot option menu where you can choose cd. You could also try booting to usb or sd card if you want.

Revision history for this message
jbrandt04330 (jeb-jebswebs) said :
#5

This is an old machine with BIOS dated from 2003. There is no option to boot off USB or other drive. The main DVD/CD/writeable drive is toast. The secondary is a DVD-ROM, and I have pointed the BIOS to boot off that, but it is not working. I will try to recreate a new DVD using a slower write setting to see if I can create a bootable DVD.

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#6

Hi :)

Dvds don't work quite as well as Cds because they have a much faster "burn-time". Oddly the best thing to use is the cheapest write-once Cds that you can buy. Usually i get a stack of 10 or 25 or something from my grocery store. The cheaper the better for this task!

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto

Can you check the Dvd to see if it's md5sum is ok?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM#Check%20the%20CD
This is normally about the first thing to look at when a cd/dvd doesn't work because once you know how to do it it's the fastest easiest thing to check.

I found with my old pavilion that the cd-drive needed replacing and that gave an extra couple of years life to the machine but i should have gone for an external cd/dvd-drive instead really.

If you can't get Ubuntu working then it can help to try sliTaz just to see if you can get a LiveCd of sliTaz working. It's only 30Mb but it's LiveCd still has plenty of useful tools for stuff like this.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slitaz
Download their latest stable LiveCd version and see if you can make a Cd of that

Please let us know how this goes!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#7

Hi again :)

If you can boot into Ubuntu or sliTaz, either as a LiveCd or one of the installed versions then please get to a command-line and give us the output of this command

sudo fdisk -l

where "-L" is a lower-case "-L". This shows the layout of the partitions on your hard-drive. The Linux command-line doesn't like copy&paste keyboard shortcuts but mouse right-clicks work fine. Ubuntu is the easiest one to use because the Ubuntu LiveCd should find your internet connection easily whereas with SliTaz you probably need to save the output into a ".txt" file that you can then copy&paste into here from Xp. Also with sliTaz the command would have to be broken into

su
fdisk -l

because i don't think sliTaz has the "sudo" command. However sliTaz is small and light enough to successfully burn even on fairly broken cd-drives!
Good lucka nd regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
jbrandt04330 (jeb-jebswebs) said :
#8

Thanks everyone. It turns out the first ISO image I downloaded on my Win7 machine was corrupt, so I downloaded it on my laptop/WinXP and burned it onto an old CD+RW at slow speed. The ISO works fine on the laptop, but not the old HP desktop. So I have ordered a new replacement DVD/CD drive and will replace the IDE controller ribbon wire too. We'll see. Thanks again.

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said :
#9

Hi :)

If you could download sliTaz and try that as an alternative to Ubuntu, as a LiveCd in the first instance, then that might work through the old cd/dvd-drive.

I think the pavilion has 1 usb2 slot and 1 usb1. I can never remember which is the top one but once you find the usb2 then that is the one that 'should' be able to be booted up from. You might have a slightly older pavilion that only has usb1 slots but they often did have 2 identical looking slots only 1 of which was a usb2. If you are able to set-up a bootable usb-stick and if the pavilion has a usb2 slot then installing would be easier from that. Note the usb-stick would have to be a fairly decent size. I think the recommended lowest size is 1Gb but more would be better imo. I got a couple of 8Gb sticks for stuff like this although that is a bit extreme. An external hard-drive might have been cheaper!

Please let us know how this all goes, especially if you have success with sliTaz

Regards from
Tom :)

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