Wubi install won't boot into Ubuntu

I'm assuming this is 11.04 from the "prefix" message (which is not a problem in itself). What "drive" did you install on (C: or some other?). If it's another, is it removable.

If it's removable, does your bios see it? To check, when you get to the grub prompt enter: ls (lower case LS) and report back with the output (only if it is on a removable drive).

In general, it's a good idea to run chkdsk /f on the windows partition to make sure it's clean, and defragmenting is also a good idea, before installing with Wubi.

I used the defaults in the installer, which were C: and the latest version (11.04). It did write 17 GB of files under C:\ubuntu.

Just finished running chkdsk /r and it turned up nothing except for some free space that was marked as allocated. Correcting this didn't fix the Ubuntu boot problem. I'd ran the defrag tool a couple of days earlier and it said I didn't need to defrag the C: drive.

Though it's not a removable disk, I checked ls anyway. Here's what I see when I enter "ls" at the grub prompt:

(memdisk) (hd0) (hd0, msdos1) (hd1) (hd1, msdos1) (fd0)

This is puzzling - I personally haven't seen this problem before. Do you have disk encryption of any sort? Perhaps any special volume management in Windows? Raid? Basically anything out of the usual?

I'll try and dig around also, but if everything is normal, and uninstalling/reinstalling doesn't change anything - I'd consider filing a bug report.

There's nothing like that that I know of.

In any case, thanks for your help.

Here's the BIOS settings that might be relevant:

HDD SMART Monitoring [ENABLED]

Extended IDE Drive [AUTO]
Access Mode [AUTO]

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Anyone have an update or some insight into this problem? I had exactly the same thing happen to me except that it happened after using ubuntu 11.04 without problems for about a month.

kjlquist,
It's best to create a new question as yours is a different problem (you had it installed and working, but this question is about a failure to complete the install).

However, most likely you have had some ntfs corruption or root.disk corruption. Look for the file C:\ubuntu\disks\root.disk and make sure it is there (change C: to whatever 'drive' you installed to). If it's not there, then you need to find it. If it's there... you might have to run fsck on it. In this case, create a new question and write down exactly the error messages and what happens when you try to boot Ubuntu.

Thanks

OK, thanks bcbc!

Hello, I am new to this. I have the same problem as this person. I installed this as a dual boot with windows on my E drive which is an old c drive from another computer which still has xp pro on it. Do you think I am getting this error because this is not my boot disk? I have those files installed, I have seen them in the E drive. would it help to wipe out the windows on the E drive being that I have windows installed on my current C drive?

Peter please create a new question.
From grub please provide the output of:
search -s -f -n /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
echo $root
ls (hd1,1)/ubuntu/disks

From windows provide the output of:
dir /s E:\ubuntu

Thanks

Hi,

I had a similar issue, and running chkdsk as described here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1770540 solved my problem.

For what is worth, I was having the same issues after having Ubuntu 11.0.4 up and running for over a month. After looking at the files system under Windows I noticed that my root.disk file had 0 bytes. Something, either Windows 7 or Ubuntu itself, corrupted the file. Luckily I had a backup of my computer including my ubuntu install so I was able to recover by replacing the bad root.disk file with a previous version. Hopefully this information would throw some light into this problem.