Hello,
I have recently put Ubuntu on a friend's computer. I can access the windows partition and everything through Ubuntu. When I go to restart, his Windows XP Media Center Edition is in the boot loader's list but when I go to boot into it all I get is a black screen with a flash _ at the top left. It then just continues to sit there. I was wondering if maybe GRUB was looking in the wrong spot for the OS.

Before I installed Linux he was having problems with Windows XP, which is one reason why I switched him to Ubuntu. For some reason his computer was booting his HP Recovery partition instead of his Windows partition on start up. I was hoping by putting Ubuntu on and using GRUB as a boot loader I would be able to load Windows and Ubuntu side by side as it is on my machine. Windows still doesn't work though

I hope people can help me out. I know this isn't really an Ubuntu question but I was unsure where to post boot loader questions.

God Bless,

Dustin

†

Also a possibility a friend suggested is that the boot.ini for windows isn't pointing to the right place to boot, or something along those lines.

Definitely not a Ubuntu issue.

You could have to manually edit your grub config file to point to the windows boot files.

Alternatively, if it was not booting correctly before, how can Grub boot it correctly?

Don't know if you can edit the windows boot settings from Ubuntu, command line, or other utility.

I always do the repair from within the windows OS. Run, msconfig, boot.ini, semi-readable text configuration. You can do this in Safe Mode or with a 2nd windows install on a separate partition. Fix it, verify access to personal data files and boot into 1st windows partition/install. Then delete the 2nd windows install and run the utility at the msconfig/boot tab to detect bootable versions and let it automatically reset the boot settings. It sounds a lot harder to do than it really is.

Good luck.

how do i edit the grub config file? where is it located perhaps i could change where it points etc..

Thanks,

Dustin

The Windows entry should automatically be there. Check the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file for the Windows entry.
You can also try running:
from the terminal. This will run a check for all the OSs on the computer and update grub.cfg accordingly.
Be sure to get all the updates for Ubuntu. There have been several updates for grub2 since Ubuntu 9.10 came out. Here is a tutorial on grub2:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Grub2
Note that this only applies to the current version of Ubuntu, which is 9.10. Older versions of Ubuntu use grub-legacy. For grub legacy you can check the /boot/grub/menu.lst file for the Windows entry.
As Amenditman said though, if Windows was not booting correctly before you installed Ubuntu, then this is likely a Windows issue.