I have been dual booted with XP/ubuntu 12.04 but on returning from holiday last September, have lost the contact page for ubuntu.The dual e

BluenoteDave · 05-17-2017, 01:53 PM

dual booted XP /ubuntu 12.04(via wubi) onto drive C.
Used it for 2 years, then after a month away, found I had lost contact - the dual boot shows, but when I click on ubuntu I get a 2 second window then a black screen. This was
8 months ago and I still cannot bring it up ???

Ztcoracat · 05-17-2017, 02:23 PM

Has it been a really long time since that version of Ubuntu was updated?

If you still have the Live CD you can use that to try to boot it up.
If that fails you may need to perform a fresh installation but try 'boot repair" first if you can.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery

System Rescue Disk may be another way to go if boot repair is not successful.
http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/

Good luck.

michaelk · 05-17-2017, 02:49 PM

In an nutshell wubi installs Ubuntu like a regular Windows application and uses a virtual disk which means normal grub repair methods will not work. However, you can try using a LiveCD to perform a fsck.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WubiGuide

yancek · 05-17-2017, 04:46 PM

Support for Ubuntu 12.04 ended last month.
If you've read the Wubi page, you know that it was designed as a method to test Ubuntu and was never meant to be used in the same manner as an actual install. If you got two years worth of use out of it, count your blessings.
A wubi install puts an entry in the windows boot menu so you might take a look at your boot.ini file on xp to see if you can detect a problem.

ondoho · 05-18-2017, 12:59 PM

i'm pretty sure wubi has been declared dead quite some time ago.

Habitual · 05-18-2017, 02:44 PM

Wubi died before 12 went EOL.

Ztcoracat · 05-18-2017, 03:37 PM

Your best bet BluenoteDave is to download and perform a fresh installation.

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

mrmazda · 05-18-2017, 11:21 PM

Are you sure you never upgraded to 14.04 as you asked about here on 2014-10-03?

WFV · 05-20-2017, 07:31 PM

you should be able to reinstall 12.04 without using WUBI from an install disk - make sure Windows XP still boots first - and as others mentioned 12.04 is no longer supported nor WUBI, but that probably has nothing to do with losing the ability to dual boot. My guess is possibly you tried to update Ubuntu to a newer release, and that is what broke the dual boot - happened to me when I tried to go from 11.04 to 12.04 on a dual boot Ubuntu/XP machine - I didn't use WUBI though, so when you re-install, don't WUBI it, do the bonafide reinstall so that it is truly parallel install with XP. If you want to keep using that old version, do not try to update any apps in it.