I have a Toshiba nb205(netbook), and the first thing I did was put UNR on it. I'm very happy with it, but seeing how the Windows version is very stable and there are drivers specifically for it(I've fixed some of the ubuntu problems already) I'd like to have it on just in case. After installing windows xp, the bootloader took over, and with a live usb of UNR I got in rootterminal and reinstalled grub. Now when I go into grub Windows doesn't show up.

Here's my fdisk -l output:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9e779e77

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 8873 71272341 5 Extended
/dev/sda2 * 8874 12697 30716280 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 1 8873 71272309+ 83 Linux


Thanks for having a look.

What's UNR?

What does /boot/grub/menu.lst contain?

UNR is the Ubuntu Netbook Remix

Here's my grub menu.lst. I've tried several edits to this to make it work but no luck so far. I figure we can go back to the beginning so I deleted the Windows edits that weren't working.

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-14-generic
uuid d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-14-generic (recovery mode)
uuid d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-14-generic root=UUID=d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-14-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
uuid d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
uuid d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
uuid d786fc7d-8c82-4430-b98d-4657c129a88e
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

How did you "reinstall grub"?

Try running (as root): update-grub
I am under the impression that this will automatically generate menu.lst and will find Windows too.

did your windows entry look like this:
title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
map (hd0,1) (hd0,0)
map (hd0,0) (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

I just purchased a Gateway netbook recently. I needed to edit menu.lst. The "rootnoverify (hd0,0)" entry was the repair partition. Windows is on (hd0,1) instead.

[QUOTE=AlucardZero;3643661]How did you "reinstall grub"?

After Installing Windows I found out Grub had been purged because of the Windows bootloader being installed, maybe that's not the case but something happened with the Windows bootloader that wouldn't allow me to use Grub, so I used the liveusb of UNR to run terminal and re-install it(or make it in use, not sure). And now Ubuntu's the only thing showing.


[QUOTE=colorpurple21859] did your windows entry look like this:
title windows
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
map (hd0,1) (hd0,0)
map (hd0,0) (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

At first it wasn't like that, but after looking at other posts I tried that but now I get this error saying there is a computer disk hardware configuration problem, and that it could not read from selected boot disk. This is the same error I received after trying jschiwal's method.

Give us the complete message and/or grub error code.

fixboot command off your xp cd recovery console might work if windows was booting before you reinstall grub

@syg00, the problem no longer seems to be with Grub but with the windows boot process.The error I get is as follows, "Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the windows documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manuals for additional information.'

At this point I can't figure out what's wrong and I'm tempted to format everything and install windows then UNR, hopefully that fixes all of my problems.

I wouldn't expect the Windoze loader to work in that configuration, but I would expect chainloading to it {as (hd0,1)} to work. Never tried that config so maybe ntldr does some checks I've never seen.
Re-install of everything might be the fix (windoze first). As a matter of interest I always leave 20 Gig unallocated at the start of a new disk in case I need to add something that might be less accommodating than Linux - Windoze, Opensolaris, one of the BSDs ...

I have one of these machines and 9.04 UNR.

Can you boot into Ubuntu with the current grub?
I had problems in the beginning after repartitioning and installing UNR. I had to restore Windows as you did. Then I had to reinstall grub, but I did it from ubuntu on the disk. I used the install usb for UNR, but instead of reinstalling grub from that, I booted into UNR on the hard drive. I used the advanced settings and removed the part that says quiet splash and also the part that says "file=..." I left the initrd part. I added: root=/dev/sda5 - your root partition may not be that, so change sda5 to whatever it is. It took a very long time for it to boot, but it finally did and then I ran from a terminal:

That worked for me.

My original problem after installing UNR was that the geometry of the drive in the BIOS was changed and the windows boot sector showed the location of the ntldr using the original geometry. That was corrected with the windows restore. Did you use Toshiba's restore disk, btw?