I cannot boot windows from the GRUB loader screen??? HELP!

syfah · 08-07-2011, 05:44 PM

i installed ubuntu 11.04 with a problem that came up in installation. It said that it could not detect any other OS's on my Computer. Anyways, i just selected manually resize partitions and continued.(i had made a sep partition for ubuntu) Now when GRUB load's it cannot see WINDOWS VISTA! it does show me the windows recovery loader thing. I can still access windows harddrives from ubuntu, so i know windows is still there! (C drive and D drive) I really need to get back to windows and need your guys help!
INCLUDED RESULTS.txt!

flamelord · 08-07-2011, 06:19 PM

I don't know if this is true for your case, but on two computers, one with Vista, the other with Windows 7, the "Windows Recovery" option was actually the normal Windows partition.

yancek · 08-07-2011, 06:41 PM

Your bootinfo script output shows a menu.lst file on both sda5 and sda7. Both of these files have entries for vista on sda2 (hd0,1). Since Grub2 is installed to the master boot record these files are not used. The grub.cfg files are used and you have entries in the grub.cfg files on sda5 and sda7 for the recovery partition (sda1) but no entries for the vista partition on sda2. You will need to put an entry there. Have you tried booting Ubuntu and running sudo os-prober and when that completes sudo update-grub? That would be the easiest.

If that doesn't work for you, you can create/add a custom entry to the correct grub.cfg file (sda5 or sda7). The site below explains how to do that in Section 6:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

wagscat123 · 08-07-2011, 06:57 PM

Something to watch for is that Windows often creates a first boot partition. Something you can do in the median term is:
1. Start up and hit c once the menu appears
2. Type chainloader (hd0,1)+1
3. Hit ENTER
4. Type boot
5. Hit ENTER

If it doesn't work, try using hd0,0 or hd0.2.

Larry James · 08-07-2011, 06:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syfah

i installed ubuntu 11.04 with a problem that came up in installation. It said that it could not detect any other OS's on my Computer. Anyways, i just selected manually resize partitions and continued.(i had made a sep partition for ubuntu) Now when GRUB load's it cannot see WINDOWS VISTA! it does show me the windows recovery loader thing. I can still access windows harddrives from ubuntu, so i know windows is still there! (C drive and D drive) I really need to get back to windows and need your guys help!
INCLUDED RESULTS.txt!

In most circumstances a variation of the following line will locate all OS installations and make them appear in the boot menu:

Code:

sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda

Replace "/mnt/boot" with your main Ubuntu boot drive space.

You can also use boot-repair to recover your OS installations.

Code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair-ubuntu

-- L. James

--
L. D. James
ljames@apollo3.com
www.apollo3.com/~ljames