Dual Boot Ubuntu and Vista: boot error PLEASE advise
 

hi

i reinstalled ubuntu onto my desktop, it was currently running vista, I wanted to dual boot them. I did a full install of ubuntu

When starting up my pc it loaded the ubuntu boot screen allowing me to choose which OS to boot. however ubuntu was set to default, but I wanted vista to be default.

Therefore I downloaded startupmanager and changed the default OS to Vista and the countdown time to 0 seconds (this was all done in ubuntu).

Now when I start up my pc, it loads to the ubuntu boot screen for about half a second selecting Vista then displays the message:

Starting Up ...
GRUB Loading stage2 ...

It then loops this


I therefore cannot boot Vista or ubuntu and have no clue what to do

any help/advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks


Charlie

try running ubuntu as a livecd, and check that all your hard drive partitions are visible under the 'places' menu. if they are there, and you can access them using the livecd, you need to reinstall grub to your ubuntu partition.

Supergrub
 

Hi

Download and run as a live CD "Supergrub" (just google)

This will give you plenty of options to arrange,re-install or repair your grub setup.

This can also be used to then specify your boot order.

Hope this helps

Clive

Thank you :) another problem :/ ...
 

thank you very much, all is now sorted on the booting error, just fixed it through using a live cd and editing the menu.lst file through terminal.

However now I am unable to access the files on my vista partition...

below shows the partitions on my hard drive

Disk /dev/sda: 360.0 GB, 360080695296 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 43777 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x46821cc3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 43451 349020126 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 43452 43777 2618595 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 43452 43755 2441848+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 43756 43777 176683+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

As you can see above there is a vista partition definatly still there..

however...

charlie@Jarvis:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o force /dev/sda1 /media/vista
Unexpected clusters per mft record (-1).
Failed to mount '/dev/sda1': Invalid argument
The device '/dev/sda1' doesn't seem to have a valid NTFS.
Maybe the wrong device is used? Or the whole disk instead of a
partition (e.g. /dev/sda, not /dev/sda1)? Or the other way around?

I get the above when I try to mount the vista partition to /media/vista?


(this is what I entered to get the above :

charlie@Jarvis:~$ sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o force /dev/sda1 /media/vista)


any ideas?

much appreciated :)

It looks like the NTFS partition is not consistent, can you boot into Vista?

Read this: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-455565.html

thanks irishbitte

I can't boot into vista and when I put in the vista cd, it doesn't recognise that vista is installed as an OS :/

however the article that you linked me does sound similar so I'll follow those instructions

thanks

I'll post another reply after I've tried

well, hope that goes well, it seems that by 'fixing' the mbr in windows, you will be able to boot into your vista install. take a look down the very end of that article i linked you to, it seems that person got sorted, but i think it was windows xp. the commands are similar in vista, there are a few ways of fixing the mbr, look up easybcd for an easy way to reinstall your vista bootloader, and i think it may take care of linux for you too.

Thats the problem, the windows drive is HPFS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Pe...ce_File_System

How does that effect what I need to do?

It doesn't mean anything, from the article posted above: This is mine: as you can see, I have two HPFS/NTFS partitions, one the main Vista one, and the other is the recovery partition.

Did you try the EasyBCD thing I posted?

I can't boot into windows..

What happened? In post #4 you indicate you 'sorted booting error' and in your last post and post #7 you indicate you can't.

Also, what is "startupmanager" you refer to in your first post? You said you set the timeout with this to zero (0) which is not a good idea since it gives you no time to select.

Anyhow, did you try re-installing Grub using your Ubuntu CD? That should be the simplest. If you load the CD in the drive, open a terminal and type: sudo grub you should get a grub prompt (grub>) and from there enter:

root (hd0,4)
setup (hd0)
quit

Hit enter key after each line. This should install Grub stage1 to the master boot record having it point to sda5 (Ubuntu) for the remaining Grub bootloader files.

EasyBCD irishbitte referred to is a program designed to modify the vista bootloader which is different than previous versions of windows. It is not a microsoft product (obvious since it is a free download) but they recommend it. If you want to go that way, there should be no reason why you would have to be able to boot vista, just download EasyBCD and copy it to a CD, put it in the drive and go. Grub, I believe would be easier.

I fixed the boot issue - as in I can now boot into ubuntu however I am still unable to boot into vista.

It still comes up with the error message:

Loading Grub 1.5...
Error Loading Stage 2

Something like that, thats only when I choose with Vista.

I can't boot into vista at all...