My son gave me his old laptop and I attempted to dual boot Ubuntu/WindowsXP pro, but Ubuntu installed OVER the OS instead of alongside as intended.

I still have know idea WHY it didn't install a dual boot but since I was intending to learn Linux I am kinda COMMITTED to learn it or dump it. Ubuntu even deleted the hidden partition that had the OEM info for windows or it is unmounted and I can't see it. SO.... now I don't know enough to do much on this laptop.

Has anyone else had a problem understanding the initial few prompts during the installation and ended up wiping all the photos and applications they used on windows? It seems like there should be some additional warning prompts to prevent wiping everything out but the first I knew windows was gone was when Ubuntu asked for the password. I am guessing that I can't get anything back

dmac257

Most likely user error.

Installing any OS is for someone with something more than average computer skills. It's also possible to "nuke" everything when installing windows, or any OS for that matter.

It's likely that you instructed the installer to use the entire disk - hence why it wiped out the partition table and started from scratch.

If you didn't back up your data then that may be that last you've seen of it.

Anything of value should be backed up, any hard drive can die any time.
As a matter of fact, there are two kinds of computer users. The ones who never had a hard drive failure and the ones who make backups.
Regarding this old laptop. How old it really is? What CPU, how much RAM? Ubuntu may not be optimal, Lubuntu may be better choice.

Does that mean you actually selected the "Install Alongside" option in the Ubuntu installer rather than the "Erase Disk" or "Something Else" options? If you wanted additional warning or pompts, you could have got them by selecting the "Something Else" option. That would have probably given you more than your wanted. If you selected either of the first two options, then you are not going to get a step-by-step install asking what you want. It will be more like a windows standard install, ovewriting everything without asking or informing you.

I can understand your frustration but, you might have just done an online search as there are countless tutorials on dual-booting Linux/windows and specifically Ubuntu and various windows releases. Also, as suggested above, if the data was important to you, you should certainly have had a backup.

From the information you posted, all we can do is guess as to what happened including whether you still have some or all of your windows OS/data. The first step toward determining whether you have data is to boot Ubuntu, open a terminal by simultaneously holding down the Ctrl+Alt+t keys and typing: sudo fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command). Hit the Enter key and you will then be prompted for the password of the user you created during the install. Enter it and again hit the Enter key. You should see some output and if you see anything showing HPFS/NTFS in the output, something related to windows is there. Otherwise not.

It is likely that your data is not totally lost, especially if there was a recovery partition on the beginning of the disk. If you would like to recover your data the first thing not to do is to actually start the installed Ubuntu. Start from the Live-DVD, install Testdisk on it and see if you can use its Photorec part to recover your data.

What he said.

Just to add to that it is easier to recover data with the fewest mounts possible on the drive involved.

That said, I have used testdisk quite a bit and it is a truly amazing tool that can dig down through several layers of an over written drive and still get clean data recovered from the layer you want.