Wubi

Ubuntu 9.04 will not boot, grey screen and cursor

Asked by Hutchys'

I am running XP in in my hard drive partitioned with Ubuntu 9.04, I have not upgraded.
On my boot menu I have two options, Windows or Ubuntu.
Windows boots normally. I can also boot windows in safe mode, but not Ubuntu.
If I try to boot Ubuntu after 3-5 seconds the Ubuntu boot goes to a grey/black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left hand corner of the screen and it will stay like that, probably for ever.
I am not very computer savvy but have tried all the options which flash up very briefly before booting , f2, f11 etc but I have not been able to make any difference to its failure to boot.
I have a lot of information on this OS which I would be loath to lose.
Can anyone help me get back in please.
Thanks in advance for your time.
Cheers ~ Jonathan

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Tom
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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

If data is important then get a backup. If you do not have a backup then the data is NOT important to you. The drive motor could fail randomly then you have lost your data or have to fork out thousands (yes thousands) of dollars for professional and non-guaranteed data retrieval. Buy a 1Tb usb disk for a few hundred and you can restore the data at any time on any system.

You may get a boot from Ubuntu using some boot options:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

You may have to boot to liveCD to then chroot to the installed Ubuntu system and add some funky boot options there but the boot options link should help you get the system booted.

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Best Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

Hi :)

It is possible to recover data from this. We had a case a couple of weeks ago that took a couple of us quite a while to learn about the Wubi install.

The Wubi install is Ubuntu installed inside Windows as though it was just another program. As such it is only meant for fairly short-term use but many people have managed to keep it running for years. It is better to do a proper dual-boot install so that Ubuntu is not resting on Windows flaky formats and depending on Windows systems. MicroSquish is becoming increasingly afraid of the Ubuntu threat to their market share and does not always co-operate well with it's rivals.

Ok, i think the first step in the process is to acquire an Ubuntu Cd
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
then try it as a bootable Cd (we call this a LiveCd)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
then find a 20Gb space that you can use to install Ubuntu onto on your hard-drive.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot
This is a proper dual-boot install that allows Ubuntu to use the very much more robust linux systems & formats, such as Ext3 rather than Ntfs.

From there or from the LiveCd we can try to "loop mount your Wubi" so that we can access it just as though it was another separate drive. I will try to dig out the thread to remind myself of how we finally fixed this last time!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Revision history for this message
Hutchys' (avph12) said : 		#3

Thanks Tom, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Hutchys' (avph12) said : 		#4

Many thanks to Tom, he provided the information bridge I needed, one of those 'of course' remedies but huge credit to Tom.
Keep up the good work. Cheers ~ Hutchy

Revision history for this message
Tom (tom6) said : 		#5

Hi :)

Thanks :) I found the link. The loop back thing which i still don't understand really was near the end of
https://answers.launchpad.net/wubi/+question/107653

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)