Wubi

Wubi Ubuntu 11.10 damaged my Vista system after first boot

Asked by Chris

System specs:
Dual Xeon 3.6gig 64bit
8gigs ECC Ram
NTFS filesystem on Dell CERC Raid1 array
NVidia GForce 9400GT with 512Meg dedicated RAM
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit

I tried installing the latest Ubuntu (11.10) side-by-side with my Windows Vista using the Wubi installer.

The installation went fine, no errors.

On first boot up, The first error said "failed to chmod 600 /etc/passwd". not a huge issue.

The system starts and I can log in to the UI (Unity) with my username and password. All looks fine, I can browse the net, etc.

But when I reboot the trouble starts.

The normal Ubuntu splash screen flickers, theres lines through it, like its scewed, the system takes a lot longer to start.

When it starts I cant log in with my username anymore. It just will not accept my username and password.

If i switch to a vty and try to log in it still doesnt accept my username and password.

Cant log in to the vty as root either - doesnt accept password.

when i boot back in to windows I notice that my system clock has been changed - this is really annoying. I hate it when things change my system without asking.

When I try to uninstall Wubi the uninstaller fails and Windows throws a warning telling me that the files in C:\Ubuntu are corrupt and that a Check Disk has been scheduled for next boot. Really?? Wubi or Ubuntu has also screwed files on my NTFS file system.

I'm also noticing problems with other applications on my PC have issues now where I've never had an issue before. E.g. Steam wont start at all now. I log in to steam each and every day without a problem.

I guess ill have to do the check disk to see how much damage there is. Over 1.5terabytes of disk is going to take a while to scan and repair so thats great news...rendering my PC unusable for hours.

Good work Wubi and Ubuntu.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

maybe the drive is faulty. have you tested that? There is a test tool on the ultimate boot CD which will cater for the main drive manufacturers.

There is no root password in Ubuntu, the account is disabled.

Have you tested your RAM using memtest? Running an OS without issue is not a memory test

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Chris (chris-p-barnes) said : 		#2

maybe the drive is faulty??
A raid1 disk array where the problem only presents its self when booting Ubuntu or trying to delete the Ubuntu files from NTFS?

If there were problems with my disks my raid controller would have told me but right now its telling me both disks are healthy.

I havent tested all 8gigs of ECC ram, no.

You are right that running a specific system without major issue isnt a true indication the Ram isnt faulty.

Im not going to sit here and test the Ram, especially having to sit and wait for ChkDsk to check my C: volume. Its Ecc and therefore less prone to causing issues with the OS if there is a problem, It works fine under different systems. and the problems im experiencing arent going to be caused by dodgy ram.

Bad ram isnt going to change my system clock to UTC time without asking me.

Bad ram isnt going to break my /etc/passwd

and Bad ram isnt going to cause filesystem issues on an NTFS file system specifically under one single directory on the disk.

In my opinion something has gone with with a "first run" script.

I'm assuming the installation is supposed to install the Grub bootloader on first boot because i saw info scrolling down the screen about the systems detected and changes being made to Grub, yet grub doesnt boot, the system just launches straight in to ubuntu.

Without an active root account Grub would be handy to start the system in single user mode so I can go in and see what the hell happened to /etc/passwd.

Oh well. I'm over trying to get this Wubi thing working properly and trying to repair my windows installation. Ive had two shots at it now and the exact same result every time.

I'll stick to using Debian for now and I'll assume Ubuntu works better when installed natively rather than in this Wubi configuration.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

The OS runs in RAM so if RAM is bad then it will affect and the OS performs as well as what it does.

You can boot into root recovery mode and use root there but in the desktop itself the account is disabled.

Wubi is a good 'try before you buy' but as a longterm solution it sticks. You'd have been better off resizing your NTFS and installing to the free space.

Revision history for this message
bcbc (bcbc) said : 		#4

Wubi uses a virtual disk, a loopmounted file that sits on NTFS. If the system is hard reset then it can cause file system corruption. (Same on any OS but higher risk with wubi as the disk is virtualized and is set to synch immediately, so probably has more writes). If you shutdown everything normally then there shouldn't be any corruption.

With an nvidia card you probably need the 'nomodeset' option to boot Ubuntu. Sometimes you see spurious messages that can be misleading. And possibly the system didn't complete installation if it the graphics driver failed (and didn't configure the fstab properly - that's a guess). Anyway check post #8 here for how to supply nomodeset for the technique you used: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132

Wubi is designed to try out Ubuntu, and is stable. Apart from that irritating system clock issue which only happens if you don't connect to the internet after login, it does not impact your system or other operating systems.

If you can partition, it's better - or try a bootable Ubuntu USB (live). Or even a VM.

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