Help - Installed Ubuntu but now can't start Windows!

tranceybowler · 01-28-2005, 04:56 AM

Ok, after considerable confusion over partitioning last night I managed to install Ubuntu, which works reasonably well. However now the GRUB boot menu only shows Ubuntu, no Windows. I'm pretty sure windows is still on there as I partitioned the drive in Partitionmagic in Windows before running the Ubuntu installer.

I may have made a mistake the first time I ran the ubuntu installer as I selected the new partition to be formatted but chose to make it bootable. The installer crashed after about 89%, saying something to do with a Kernel file. I then restarted and ran the installer again, this time selecting the empty partition for formatting but not selecting the bootable option. This time it installed relatively well, a couple of fail messages popped up but essentially it worked.

I now have ubuntu but can't run windows XP. Where do I start? Any assistance greatly appreciated! If you need any clarification just ask.

Many Thanks!
Matt

0pal_t0ad · 01-28-2005, 10:39 AM

you need to open up /boot/grub/grub.conf using a text editor like kedit.
and add:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

to the bottom of the file.
the (hd0,0) is assuming that win is intalled on the the first partition of the primary hdd.

0pal_t0ad · 01-28-2005, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by tranceybowler
The installer crashed after about 89%, saying something to do with a Kernel file. I then restarted and ran the installer again, this time selecting the empty partition for formatting but not selecting the bootable option. This time it installed relatively well, a couple of fail messages popped up but essentially it worked.

fail msgs doesn't sound very good. was it a downloaded iso image or did you get through the post?

tranceybowler · 01-28-2005, 11:14 AM

Opal Toad, thanks for the help, your solution sounds good, only problem is that there doesn't seem to be a grub.conf file in the location you mentioned. I tried turning on "show hidden files" too. Am I missing something? I downloaded the ISO from the ubuntu website.

0pal_t0ad · 01-28-2005, 11:28 AM

were you logged in as root when you checked? also, when you open the /boot dir, are there ANY files in there? If not, then it means that /boot is kept on another partition and you'll need to mount it. otherwise try searching your hdd for grub.conf

as you downloaded the iso, you check it against the md5 checksum to make sure that it isn't corrupt/try reburning it.

tranceybowler · 01-28-2005, 11:45 AM

thanks again opal toad, I discovered that the file is called menu.1st according to another forum user. Only problem is that it's read only. How do I log in so that I can change the write permissions on this file? Once again, many thanks for your help!

0pal_t0ad · 01-29-2005, 05:13 AM

Oh YEAH! i forgot about that, it's a just a link to grub.conf. to edit it you'll need the admin password that was set during the install of linux. it should have asked for a 'root' password. You need to login as root with the password, then you'll have read/write access to everything.