Hello All,
I recently installed Ubuntu (HH), dual booting with windows XP. After installation, Grub let me go log into windows fine on my second hard drive. That was until I installed GFXgrub. I installed GFX boot before fine with 7.04 and 7.10. This time after installation it let me log into ubuntu fine but wouldn't boot into windows. It quickly showed:
root hd0,1
Filesystem Type unknown, partition....
save default
...
...
than it just reverted right back to GFXgrub home screen.
When I tried to boot to windows drive, after I disabled my other drive it just shows the word grub in the top left corner, not letting me do anything. I also tried to use my fix boot disk and selected my windows hard drive but after it was complete nothing helped. It almost has to be that the windows hard drive boot was somehow screwed up when i installed gfxgrub. I then should of just left it alone, but i tried to reinstall ubuntu on my 2nd harddrive again, but this made it worse. It didn't recognize my windows partition after install since it wasn't in the final menu.lst. I tried to use my super grub disk again and fix windows partition and after reboot now I get instead of windows booting, a grub command line.

Grub> (I typed in boot) and it says:
Error 8: kernel must be loaded before booting

Another side note: I'm using an ubuntu 8.04 live cd right now and it cant see either of the two partition on my 1st hard disk. But when I use an ubuntu 7.04 live cd it can see both of them and can read the first partiton: (DellUtility) fat32 (I think), but not the NTFS drive. I gives me an error, If it's relevant I could post it.



Even though I can't see the hardrive in ubuntu 8.04 my fdisk tells me:
$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe4651a0a

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 4 32098+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 5 7294 58556925 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000ed44c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 30119 241930836 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 30120 30401 2265165 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 30120 30401 2265133+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

please help I don't know what to do....Thanks

here's what i get when i try to look at ntfs drive in ubuntu 7.04. mount:wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda2.

when I run dmesg | tail I get:
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ dmesg | tail
[ 112.138279] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized
[ 112.138296] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized
[ 112.138299] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.8
[ 117.557455] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[ 178.120532] NTFS driver 2.1.28 [Flags: R/O MODULE].
[ 178.121185] NTFS-fs warning (device sda2): parse_options(): Option utf8 is no longer supported, using option nls=utf8. Please use option nls=utf8 in the future and make sure utf8 is compiled either as a module or into the kernel.
[ 178.134168] NTFS-fs warning (device sda2): is_boot_sector_ntfs(): Invalid boot sector checksum.
[ 178.134178] NTFS-fs error (device sda2): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Primary boot sector is invalid.
[ 178.134182] NTFS-fs error (device sda2): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used. Aborting without trying to recover.
[ 178.134185] NTFS-fs error (device sda2): ntfs_fill_super(): Not an NTFS volume.

To get some information, at your grub prompt type the following commands:

grub> geometry (hd0) tells partition number, type, filesystem type, for the first drive.
grub> geometry (hd1) tells partition number, type, filesystem type, for the second drive

grub> find /sbin/init ##this will show where initrd files are
grub> find /vmlinuz ##will show any kernel files in root directory
grub> find /boot/vmlinuz ##will show kernel files in boot directory
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

See what results you get from these commands and post.

Ok, thanks for the reply.

heres what I get:

geometry (hd0)
drive 0x80: C/H/S = 1023/255/63, The number of sectors= 117187500, LBA
partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xde
partition num: 1, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

geometry (hd1)
drive 0x81: C/H/S = 1023/255/63, The number of sectors= 488397168, LBA
partition num: 0, Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

For all the other commands I typed in I got a rumble from my computer (hard drive maybe) and it responded:

Error 15: file not found

this can't be good

after installing ubuntu 8.04 again lol, i get a GRUB loading stage 1.5 then it waits 5 seconds and boots to ubuntu. It dosen't show grub selection screen, so it never recognized my windows. Is this a major problem. I don't know how installing gfxgrub could of killed the windows boot so bad.

does anyone know a way to fix my windows boot?

not necessarily - let's see the output from this

sure

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=36e0f4f6-829c-41df-867a-99ea20777f9c ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=36e0f4f6-829c-41df-867a-99ea20777f9c ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

thats all it says! Windows showed on my last previous installation,thats whats weird.

Odd - I haven't done full (clean) install of Hardy yet (just upgrades of test systems during the beta). Try just adding a stanza for 'doze - what happens ???.

Ok, so I added the following:

title Other operating systems:
root

title Windows 95/98/NT/2000
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It preforms the same on start-up, It says grub loading 1.5 than it says loading grub in 5...4...3...2.. and counts down then boots ubuntu, doesn't even let me select recovery mode or anything.

have a quick look, if you can find something,

http://apcmag.com/5459/dualboot_ubuntu_and_windows_xp

Maybe there is a wrong in your 'menu.lst' . You can attempt to modify your 'menu.lst' below following :

First : delete this line of the 'hiddenmenu' ,ahead of 'title' , then you should select the boot menu on the system start up.

Second : before you had add a 'title' about 'windows',that was follow :
title Windows 95/98/NT/2000
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1
i thought there is a problem with the 'title' , and you can take 'root (hd0,0)' instead of 'root
(hd0,1)' .because of the first partition of the disk is from 0 , 1 , 2 ,.... , by analogy of this.

ok so thanks for helping my grub menu. Now when I choose Windows the screen turns black and in the upper left corner the word grub appears. It won't let me type anything in and I have to press my power button to shutdown.