these are my first days as a linux user and so far i love the os, but still need windows. a'ight, here goes:

# 1.6 GHz Intel Pentium M 730 (Sonoma), 533MHz FSB and PCIe x16 chipset
# 15.4 inch WSXGA+ LCD Panel (Samsung)
# 512 MB DDR2 400 MHz ram
# 60 GB Ultra ATA Fujitsu 4200rpm hard drive
# 64 MB ATi Mobility Radeon X300

> formated the drive using xp disk
> installed windows xp home

using the ubuntu 8.04.1 lts disk i:
> modified the ntsf partition from 55gig to 10gig
> designated 10 gig ubuntu partition
> designated 2 gig swap area
> formated 30-something gigs as FAT32 for shared storage

ubuntu installed perfectly, updated, i love it but windows xp home is not showing up on grubs boot menu when i restart. the partition is there when i run sudo fdisk -l in terminal. these are the results:

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1217 9775521 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 * 1218 2433 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2434 7296 39062047+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2677 7296 37110150 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda6 2434 2675 1943802 82 Linux swap / Solaris


this is what grub's menu.1st file looks like:

## ## End Default Options ##


title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

the partitions seem to be right and i would hate to have to go through the installs all over again. can i fix this???

thanks in advance for any help.

- g

Add this to menu.lst

title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Note the formatting is probably not proper so don't just copy and paste it in, type it in making sure to indent when necessary.

Add to bottom of menu list just below the last ubunt entry

title Windows XP
rootoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Do not forget to leave a line spacing between your entries.

Some info on grub.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm

And if you are just starting out, you may want to think about using the latest version - 8.10 (Intrepid).

thank you guys all very much for your help. it's a big relief to know that there's support so readily available using linux.

so...i tried the suggestions and edited grub's menu.1st file but either i get "error 13 invalid or unnsupported executable format" or "NTLDR is missing" when i attempt to boot xp.

so i reinstalled XP on the NTSF partition, it booted fine but got rid of grub. i had to use the Ubuntu LiveCD to reinstall grub so that i could access ubuntu. once i got ubuntu back up i upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10 as suggested. a few thing seem to be working better but the boot problem is still the same (i had to re-edit menu.1st for windows to show as an option).

i'll post my partition and menu.1st info again in case something changed that i don't see:


Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1217 9775521 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1218 2433 9767520 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 2434 7296 39062047+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 2677 7296 37110150 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda5 2434 2675 1943802 82 Linux swap / Solaris

title Windows XP Home
rootoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-9-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-9-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-9-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=d47f155d-0dcf-4fb5-bed4-86d928d31f92 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic

title Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

That should be "rootnoverify". See if you still get the NTLDR not found.

Sorry about the mis - spelled word. Thank you syg00 for cleaning it up.

it worked!!!! i feel like i owe you guys some beers. thanks so much.

for people using this thread in the future, grubs menu.1st file is located in boot>grub>menu.1st
you have to log into it at a root level in order to edit. there's different ways to do that but i use:
ALT+F2 > gksudo nautilus

gksudo is how you log in at a root level to graphical interfaces and nautilus is ubuntu's file browser.

ubuntu rocks.