Last night I booted the Live CD, opened a terminal window, and ran "sudo blkid -c /dev/nul"
This returned a listing of available partitions, and their block ID's. The partition that GRUB cannot find is listed!

I was very curious as to why the partition was there, and GRUB could not locate it. So I restarted and went into the BIOS looking around for anything affecting disk access.

My SATA controller was setup for IDE mode. I changed it to AHCI, rebooted, and was able to get into Linux from the NTLOADER menu. I was excited, but it was getting very late, so I tried to shutdown the machine. It hung on shutdown. Had to force the machine off. Rebooted, and tried to get into DOS. No go. Tried to get into Windows XP. No go.

So now I have Ubuntu wihout shutdown, and no DOS and Windows. Won't this torture ever end?

JC

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run

Right... where to start

The reason windows/DOS has stopped booting is the fact you changed the SATA access method and I think windows really doesn't like this. Change it back, we can change it more easily in linux anyway.

Also your going to have to learn to provide more information. Simply saying windows was a "no go" is no use to anyone. Did it not come up and give you a blank cursor? Black screen? Blue screen of death - This is what I'm expecting), just the "Windows is Starting..." message?

Do this. Then in your bios TURN OFF ALL BOOTING EXCEPT FOR USB.

I've had issues in the past when I believed one system was booting, but a completely different one was actually booting instead, but because I'd never customised grub to tell me which hdd it was booting off you couldn't tell!

Also, changing the boot order *MAY* cause the /dev/sd[a|b|c|d] values to get scrambled, your / and swap might move to other addresses. Very confusing but fixable once you've got a semi-working system.

It maybe worth setting the LABELS for the system, and using these instead of UUID, simply because they are easier to read. This is done via:

So if you know your usb is on /dev/sdf you'd do And then to test it, Hope this makes sense and helps.

Thanks Eddy1 and djsmiley2K. I'm at work now, and will have to wait till I get home to digest all this and follow your advice.

Sorry about the vagueness in my comments. I should have said my NT boot menu appeared as normal, but when I selected DOS or Windows the machine immediately restarted.

I'm wasn't booting Ubuntu from the USB flash drive. (It's no longer plugged into a port, and I disabled USB booting in the BIOS.) I'm booting Ubuntu from the Bootsect.lnx file I created earlier, and which is referenced in my Windows boot.ini.

Ok, Then I'd say its very likely that the BIOS change caused the reboots - If your eyes were fast enough (I doubt anyones are) you'd see the BSoD with the message "windows has shutdown this system to prevent damage...blabhalbhah" that comes up when something isn't right.

I think the most important lesson I've learnt, is to understand WHY your doing something. If you understand it you may notice something else which isn't quite right, which others have missed. Stick with it and you'll get there eventually.

You will have to re-install or repair Windows XP when changing from IDE to AHCI mode. Windows XP Setup only installed the generic IDE driver and did not install the SATA driver. You will also need to make a SATA driver floppy or slipstream the Intel AHCI driver to make a custom Setup CD. The ICH10 chip-set is newer than Windows XP and is not included as a standard driver in Windows XP. You can use a program called nLite to create a custom Setup CD.

To get DOS to boot you will have to use the "SYS" command again to rewrite the boot sector for the DOS partition. The Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing most likely changed when you switched between IDE and AHCI mode.

GRUB Legacy should work with IDE mode but you may have to install using native mode (from a grub boot floppy) or create a mapping file so that GRUB knows the correct BIOS drive IDs.

AHCI mode is preferred if you can use that. You said that Linux will boot in that mode. Windows XP should boot with the correct driver installed during Setup. DOS shouldn't care about the operating mode at all, since it just uses the BIOS for I/O. Just make sure that you have LBA mode set for the disk in the BIOS.

DOS 6.XX (or earlier) requires a boot sector software patch to boot from partitions located above the first 4 GB of the hard disk. You can avoid that DOS problem by installing the DOS from Windows 98 or ME instead of version 6.XX of DOS. The 98/ME versions of DOS also support FAT32. I found the DOS 6.XX boot problem on my own and created my own patch. Although I reported the DOS issue to Microsoft, they were obviously not very interested in documenting or fixing it.

I use DOS in virtual machine programs now since it works just as well and avoids the hardware compatibility issues. The best support for DOS is using Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 with the Guest Additions from Virtual PC 2004 installed in DOS.

Engineeringtech,

My compliments for your perseverance throughout the long months. Congratulations. At last you are booting ubuntu from the .ini file. At least you are booting the 3 OSs by now.

In my simple opinion your problem could have been easily solved had you followed the basic principle in learning how to play with linux: that is, to begin from the simple one that offers more learning than hair-pulling. Since you have some bootloader tinkering to do you should have started with legacy Grub, the one that can be manipulated using simple text editor, Grub-2 takes time to understand and manipulate since it is operating in multiple scripts which the m$windows migrant are rarely prepared to tackle. A distro not auto-installing Grub-2 would have been more helpful in your case.

After you have simplified your platform into a single harddrive (after giving up raid) from that point it would have taken you only few hours toward triple booting. I was only an average m$windows user, but when I migrated into linux I was multibooting DOS, XP and three other Linuxes in two months' time; and that could not have been possible without a very well written linux tutorial as this. (Download this tutorial and from that you will never take the agony of 25 months solving a simple challenge again.)

Congratulations and goodluck.

malekmustanq:

He actually can't boot anything now, see post #76.

Engineering Tech:

If you use method three in the link you posted, it would be helpful if you posted the actual commands and their output. The examples show installing Grub to the mbr which you don't want to do. If you wanted to try to boot from the USB, you would have to install Grub to sdb not to sdb1. If you have a separate boot partition, you would need all the Grub files there plus the kernel and initrd files with the stage1 in the mbr. You could create a separate Grub partition and then would not need the kernel and intird.

Since you have (hopefully) an Ubuntu installation on sda7, it would be easier to do the following. From method 3 on your earlier link:

Boot the Ubuntu Live/Install CD.
Open a terminal. Skip steps 1-3 and change step 4 to create a mount point to view the Ubuntu files on sda7 with this command:

Mount the Ubuntu partition on sda7:

Skip step 5.

Run the individual commands in step 6.

Change step 7 to: Check to see if the necessary Grub files are present on the partition with this command:

Look to see if there is a grub.cfg file. If there is run this command:

That should show the contents of the grub.cfg file. Check to see what entry you have for Ubuntu and post it.

If there is not grub.cfg, go to step 8. I think it needs sudo (sudo update-grub)

If that does not show success, you can reinstall grub with the command in step 9. Make sure you change it to the below command so you do not overwrite the master boot record. The command below will install on your Ubuntu partition, not the mbr.

You will likely get a warning about the danger of installing to a partition or something similar. Ignore it.
You can run the command in step 10 to recheck, make sure you use sda7 rather than sda. This isn't really necessary.

Do steps 11-15 to exit chroot, unmount and reboot. I would suggest that you save this to a file and copy it to one of your partitions, xp so you have it available to post with errors you may receive. Obviously, I would suggest you do this after you have followed the recommendations above to get xp booting.

Make sure that in the above commands you do NOT put sda, but always sda7 as the former will bork your mbr.

Since you want to boot everything with ntldr, you will of course, still need to do the dd copy correctly to the bootsect.lnx file, copy it to the root of your C:\ drive before this will boot.

Good luck with that.

Does that mean you get grub & are able to boot into ubuntu from partition?
If so,

EDDY1. I "think" he is referring to his earlier attempts. In his post 76, he indicates he can't boot anything. This thread is too long and confusing and I imagine a lot of people look at the number of pages and move on. It will be interesting to see if he can boot anything now, I really don't know.

@yancek
I think you're right.
If I read it correctly he's booting thru windows boot menu.

Yes, I've said several times that I am trying to boot through the Windows menu (NTLoader). The reason is because I haven't had any luck installing GRUB to the MBR. It (Grub / Ubuntu installer or whatever) doesn't detect my Windows or DOS installations, and doesn't result in a boot menu (just a "-" cursor). Only reason I involved the use of the empty USB drive, was because no matter what I tried, I could not get the Grub bootsector to install on my ext4 Ubuntu partition, or to a floppy. The operation executed without errors, but no bootsector was deposited. I need this bootsector, if I am going to chainload Ubuntu from the Windows boot menu.

I'm sorry if this thread has dragged on for so long, but I guess I am having problems communicating the issues to people.

To recap where I am now, I changed my BIOS SATA support from IDE to AHCI, and finally was able to get the bootsector written to the USB drive. I copied that bootsector to a file called "bootsect.lnx" and I am referencing that file in Windows "boot.ini" to chainload into Ubuntu. So I am now FINALLY able to boot Ubuntu. However, switching to AHCI caused a bunch of other problems. I can't shutdown. It hangs! And my DOS and Windows don't boot anymore.

I finally had that problem
Hp Pavilion a1720n
asus mobo intel processor
The problem was due to XD (disable) enabled in bios.
Everything would load except anything to do with mbr.

If you have this option in your bios let us know & wait for someone else to either comfirm that it may the cause of your problem

What is "XD" disable? I don't recall seeing that in my BIOS. I will look for that.

I found a thread at the Ubuntu forum which seems exactl like my situation. However, the discussion is way over my head.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1694750&page=7
and
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1694750&page=8


I wish to apologize to all here for the long delays in my responses. I am having a great deal of problems keeping up with all your posts and advice... Partly due to my continuing health problems, which limit my hours at a computer, and because I have no internet at the location where the target machine is, and no way of moving the machine right now.

Ok MORE grief. You'll recall I enabled the SATA AHCI support in my BIOS, and I was finally able to boot into Ubuntu for the first time in almost 15 months. But the system wouldn't shut down, and later, when I tried to boot into my DOS and Windows XP installations, I was met with a black screen and flashing cursor.

I figured I could switch the AHCI support back off, and recover my DOS and Windows boot. But no! Now with AHCI off, I can't get into ANY operating system. Apparently, my attempt to bring up DOS and Windows with AHCI enabled, damaged the MBR and/or partitions. Or is this just another random hardware failure like that which wiped out my SCSI controller? I don't know. I tried to recover the MBR using the repair function of the Windows installer. "FIXMBR" executed without an error message, but it still boots to a black screen with flashing cursor.

It was never my intent to drag the good people of this forum through six pages of posts. However, I just didn't know how screwed up this system was. And I didn't anticipate my health problems. So now I'm facing totally different PC problems. Are my hardware, drive partitioning and installations salvageable, or do I start from scratch? And do I drag the people along for the ride? I think not. So if it's alright with the people who tried so hard to help me setup my triple boot, I'm going to exit this thread, and work on this myself, on a schedule that my health problems permit. Maybe I'll eventually visit again as a Linux user. Maybe not.

Thanks again to everyone who worked so hard to try to get me up and running. Great forum!