Can't Boot Windows - Dual Boot Problem

Redisle

Okay heres the story, A few days ago i had a fully functional dual boot system with ubuntu feisty and windows xp pro and i could pick either one at the grub menu, everything was working perfectly. Then yesterday i decided that i wanted a fresh install of windows and ubuntu because i had a load of crap installed and the only thing i needed windows for was printing because its not possible for my printer to work with ubuntu.
So anyway I have a harddrive image of xp pro so i booted with hirens boot cd and restored that image.Booted into windows perfectly,installed my printer and thats all i did. Then i rebooted my computer and installed ubuntu feisty over the already present ubuntu feisty (formatted the partiton of course) and it installed fine but when the computer restarted grub was only showing ubuntu on its menu, no sign of xp. I really wanted to print something and it was a fresh install of feisty so i didnt care if i lost it so i booted from the xp disc and ran fixboot and fixmbr to see if that would get me into windows. Of course that didnt work and it just managed to totally screw up grub and then i reinstalled ubuntu again and i was able to boot into ubuntu again no problem.

So i did a bit of research and manually added xp to the grub menu.When i pressed xp on boot it just stopped at the grub "Starting Up.." Screen.
I knew I had the right partition so i figured it must have been a problem with the mbr or the boot.ini file or something. So i booted from an xp disc, opened up the recovery console and typed bootcfg /info and loan behold no sign of a windows installation. I then typed bootcfg /rebuild and it searched my harddrives for xp installations, even though it was at the time LOGGED INTO :rolleyes: an xp pro installation it did not find it, instead all it found was a copy of the I386 folder i had stored on one of the partitions for bartpe and it asked me if i wanted to add the xp installation to the boot config, Im thinking why the hell is it asking me to boot from the setup files and why the hell didnt it find the installtion its LOGGED INTO!!!, oh yea now i know why i switched to linux

So anyway i would still like to access windows to use my printer, if only lexmark would release goddam printer drivers so i wouldnt have to :mad:

I don't really want to do a manual reinstall of windows and i don't want to reinstall ubuntu again because i have it just right at the moment with beryl running smoothly.

So yea what do people think the problem is?

A few points
1. The harddrive image is not corrupt, it booted fine after i restored it the first time.
2. bootcfg can't find the xp pro installation even though it asked me to log into it when i launched the recovery console
3. I know this thread will completely baffle a lot of people if they read through it but surely someone out there knows how i can get the pos of an operating system called windows to boot? At this stage im really lost, ive done nearly everything i can think of.

Thanks for any help guys.

Aidan

Redisle

Anyone?

Anti

Only thing i can think of that will get it working is to completely format the hdd, erase all partiitions, reimage the hdd with windows. Install 7.04 again. And see if that works.

I really cant think of any quick fix tbh.

Maybe a new thread in the linux forum might help you to get more answers.

Sorry i couldnt help more

Redisle

Anti wrote:

Only thing i can think of that will get it working is to completely format the hdd, erase all partiitions, reimage the hdd with windows. Install 7.04 again. And see if that works.

I really cant think of any quick fix tbh.

Maybe a new thread in the linux forum might help you to get more answers.

Sorry i couldnt help more

Ok anti no problem. I kinda thought that was the only option and right now i dont have an external hd handy so im not gonna bother for now. I dont really want to get into windows anymore anyway because i just moved the printer to another computer but i will eventually reinstall it again probably during the summer to play some games.

Thanks for the reply anyway.
ab

joe_chicken

Are you sure you have the right partition for windows in Grub?

What commands, in grub, are you using to boot windows?

Redisle

joe_chicken wrote:

Are you sure you have the right partition for windows in Grub?

What commands, in grub, are you using to boot windows?

title Windows XP Pro
root (hd1,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

And yes its definetly the right partition, if i choose any other it comes up with ntldr is missing,with this it just stops are starting up.. the problem is not with grub as grub does not actually do the booting of windows, the problem is somewhere with the windows boot loader.

I dont care anymore anyway so nvm

ethernet

ab_cork wrote:

title Windows XP Pro
root (hd1,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

And yes its definetly the right partition, if i choose any other it comes up with ntldr is missing,with this it just stops are starting up.. the problem is not with grub as grub does not actually do the booting of windows, the problem is somewhere with the windows boot loader.

I dont care anymore anyway so nvm

And that's a primary partition? I take it you have two hard drives -- hd0 being the first drive and hd1 being the second? Sometimes Windows gets fussy about booting from anything that isn't the primary hard drive, AFAIK.

Redisle

Yea primary partition, and yea 2 harddrives, both os's are installed on hd2 which linux interprets as hd1. I did hear something about windows being fussy about that but it was booting fine from that same harddrive for months. Anyway ive decided I dont want to get into windows anymore. Thanks for the help anyway

evil-monkey

Hey bud. You're problem is that when you made the fresh install, your boot file was corrupted. It's a common problem, always happens when changing installs on a partition.

Any, not to worry, it's an easy fix.

Just let me know what you want the setup to be when it's all working and I'll tell ya what to do...