I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop and decided to dual boot with XP. I have XP installed but only to realize that i never made a copy of my grub menu list. how can I recover my ubuntu partition or recover grub?

thanks

does your system boot using windows now or do you get the GRUB> prompt?

if you go right to windows use your Linux CD and boot to recovery mode. cd to /mnt/sysimage and do an ls
you should still see the /boot partition. if you do copy your grub.conf(menu.lst) file somewhere.
you should be able to fdisk -l (L as in LIST not I) to see if you can see your boot partition (usually 200mb +/-)
make sure it is marked bootable. if not then do fdisk /dev/<harddisknumber> once you are in fdisk i believe it is 'a' to mark bootable then 'w' to save changes. reboot and follow the directions below...


if you get the GRUB> prompt type initrd in<tab> to see if it auto completes the file name. if it does backspace and type grub setup.
if not then type root= (hd<tab> [it will list options]
root=(hd0,<tab> [again it will list options]
once you have found your /boot partition usually (hd0,0) type grub setup

the setup command is not destructive so dont worry...

thanks grub is now working but i cant load XP for grub. ive listed XP in grub as:
but this does not work. when i type sudo fdisk -l i find XP on /dev/sda1.
the error im getting is: Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Press any key to continue...

Anything i can do?

thanks

You stated root(hd0,1) it means that windows is on sda2 so the second partition of you're drive .
If it is on the first partition where windows normally is it should be (hd0,0)
Grub start counting with ZERO
If you are not sure run as su or sudo the command fdisk -l(l lower case) and post the outcome

thanks ronlau9

i had the wrong partition. i logged on and changed the grub/menu.lst from (hd0,1) to (hd0,0) and it works. i can now boot to both now.

thanks again