Restore Ubuntu 11.4 after a crash - How please?
 

The price of a night out[It was my birthday after all]I awoke this morning to find all the computers had been running all night.

Windows was a little cranky but a little bit of poking got it settle.

But Linux Ubuntu is another story- installed on another machine as a dual boot system- it simply refused to respond.

In a normal situation .after POST the screen presents the Windows/Linux selector, click to Linus and a Win error flashes to screen very quickly -too quick to read- then Linux kicks in.

This morning the Win error came to screen long enough to be able to read it read 'in grey [tryhd0.0]then in yellow 'NTFS file error prefix not set.'

Normally as stated this is quick flash on/off This morning however it stayed.

ctrl/alt/del command brought up
'no such device ubuntu/inst/bot grub cfg'

So before I get radical with the hard drive- any ideas how to restore?

Let me see if I understood correctly. When you try to boot Windows, it fails and then automatically boots Ubuntu?
Could you dump your bootloader's configuration (/boot/grub/grub.cfg)?

Thank you
I'll try your suggestion if I can get to it.
To clarify
You wrote
'When you try to boot Windows, it fails and then automatically boots Ubuntu?'
not quite right
After POST a white out of black frame comes up with Windows Top and Linux under

The System preferred is selected by the up/down key and so down to Linux and off it jolly well went

Only now it does not.

Instead after a wait a series of comments come to screen such as

No suchdevice/unbuntu/ disk/root .cfg
then
No such device - ubuntu/inst/boot/grub/grub cfg

A Result- but q

A result - but from a quite unexpected quarter[for me that is]

The Windows part if this set up was not functioning either.
But that was not my concern because on this machine Linux is king and that is what I was concentrating on.

However Windows itself was not behaving- so I set about correcting that issue- by using the repair mode and fixing both Boot and MBR

When rebooting Windows came back -as expected but so did also UBUNTU

I am still puzzling how the two could be linked but never mind all is well now.

How did you install thru Wubi or cd?

Are you seeing grub at boot?

Thank you EDDY

During the difficulties when Ubuntu was putting up strange messages [strange to me - the Newbie]

one of the lines read:-' No Such Device/Ubuntu /Inst/ bot grub.inst

But now it is booting normally - I see no such lines- simply the initial plain orange start screen moving to the Ubnutu 'Purple' then the desktop after logging on.

Are you getting your windows option also?

Yes the whole lot works
So the sequence is - Boot -POST - Bios Options - then white out of black - Windows/Linux selector, select either and each works as selected.

Are you using grub or grub2?
black & white is how my original grub looked.

Grub 1 or 2?
Dunno the version of Ubuntu is 11.4
more than that I will have to delve some -I am a new newwbie despite having fiddled and built machines these past 25 years.

Following my last I thought I would re boot and check out the Window selector -it failed- tried the usual F8 options - nothing so put Win disk in and- blue screen and ck dsk ran - then the large progress bar at bottom then the O/S selector.
Selected this time Linux and 'prefix not set' came and went then -'Unclean file system - not safely closed on Windows'-Fixing

After that Ubuntu came to screen and is running -This is going out in Ubuntu.
still puzzled with the link between Windos and Linux of the disk and how they are seemingly tied to each other.

Will have to close now - its my birthday weekend and my daughters are surprising me this afternoon

When you installed ubuntu did you boot it from cd or installl from windows environment?

Good day Eddy
You asked '
[I]When you installed ubuntu did you boot it from cd or installl from windows environment?

[/I]
It must have been from a Win environment.

However this I think may be the answer to my own question
Whilst waiting for the Linux answer I set about restoring the Windows O/S, and to do this I inserted the Win. disk and selected the Repair option- which then puts up the C/: prompt.

'Which sits winking as if to say - So! Typed 'Help' and up came the DOS command list.

Selected 'fixboot followed by Fix Master Boot Record[MBR]

That did it.

Now above I commented I think 'How does Windows fix Linux?

Later thoughts of course suggest it does not.

'R' in Windoze puts you to the hard drive Root- presumably DOS must be firmware in the Bios.[or does the Windows disk do it?] any way what ever it must be the case that the Boot and Masterboot record are Hard drive functions in DOS not the actual operating system

Am I right do you think?

Jackboy I'm glad to here that you have repaired windows installation, you can do a wubi installation if that is your desired prefrence, you can do a actual install that is as simple as booting from cd or you can try out as many linux distro's as want in a VM until you find the os that suits you.
Your question on how does linux fix windows?
In some cases if you install linux along side of windows it will be detected & boot, if not atleast you can view & transfer files & documents from windows to the linux os, although some documents may have to be converted for viewing in OO or Libre.