Ubuntu Install Corrupted MBR?
 

Quick question guys...

I formatted a 10GB partition (Partition Magic) in WinXP SP2 and rebooted into the Ubuntu install. The install failed as it was unable to format the EXT3 partition for whatever reason. Following the reboot, the boot process is echoing "Operating System Not Found".

I have tried several fixes, recovery console --> copied new ntldr and ntdetect onto C:\ and ran FIXBOOT and FIXMBR and still OS Not Found error (which MSDN reports is a corrupted boot sector).

Any ideas? I'd rather not yank the drive to extract my data if its not necessary

thanks,
T3

Are you sure partition magic hadn't caused the problem? If the Ubuntu installer couldn't write to disk, sounds like something else is at fault. After re-sizing with PM, had you rebooted straight to the Ubuntu install CD, or checked your Windows bootloader was still available? As for fixing it, Windows CD booting to recovery console and then fixmbr should do it, but as I said before, sounds like something else might be wrong with the drive if you've already tried that with no luck. Can you at least still view the active partitions from the Windows recovery console, or tried loading a Knoppix Live CD for example to see if the partitions are still active and thus your data intact?

fouldsy,

Thanks for the reply. Yea, luckily the data on the disk is still intact as I can view it from the recovery console and the partition table seems ok. Its probably the fault of Partition Magic since I created the partition, rebooted (allowing PM to do it's tasks) and then I rebooted directly into Ubuntu.

I suppose I'll have to pull the disk and slave to my server to recover the data....

thanks,
T3

It's shame you can't write to any of the paritions to get Ubuntu on and allow it to write it's own bootloader and hopefully pick up windows, but since we're not sure what state the partition table is in, you risk loosing your Windows data if you tried! Although a slightly more annoying + slower process, slaving the drive on another computer is probably safer and will at least allow you to write out new partitions from scratch as you need them.

Hope you get things going and the Ubuntu install goes smoothly!

Yea, I seem to remember Libranet, or Fedora, or Caldera or one of the previous installations I've had, allowed me to partition on the fly and preserve my windows data. In any event, I'm taking the plunge into Linux on the desktop since my Linux servers have been the most reliable of all the devices on my LAN.

Thanks Again,
T3