Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

[shadowknightd]

Hello,

I just installed Kubuntu on an external hard drive and it works great. Windows also boots fine as long as the Hard Drive is plugged-in. The problem comes when I try to boot without external the hard drive. I just get the following message:

GRUB loading
error: no such disk
grub rescue>

If there any way to be able to boot windows when the external hard drive is not plugged-in.

Thanks.

[vinnywright]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

grub got instaled to the MBR of the primarey drive when you installed kubuntu but the rest of the files it neads to boot (and know what to boot) are on the external HD with kubuntu ......hear ar some resorses

genrall info
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3099811.0

grub2 info
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...pic=3106368.30

more bootloader stuff
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708

VINNY

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

Hi

I don't have any experience with ubuntu or kubuntu at all, and I think I just made it worst

I try to restore the ubuntu grub bootloader 9.10 or higher from this website http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708 and now I cannot boot on Kubuntu anymore, all I get is:

GNU GRUB version 1.97~beta 4
(some info stuff)

sh:grub>

After getting that I try fixing the windows boot loader with fixboot and fixmbr but I still can't get into windows and now I can't get into Kubuntu without usingthe cd.

Thanks.

[verndog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

The problem was when you installed Ubuntu on that external HD and used Grub as your boot loader, it now looks to that external HD's /boot directory or partition.

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

So... I did some suff and now I'm back to:

GRUB loading
error: no such disk
grub rescue>

The difference is that this time if I plug the external HDD I get error 15 and I'm still unable to boot on either Windows or Kubuntu.

If there any easy way to fix that? I'm thinking on reinstalling Kubuntu onto the external HDD but how can I tell it to look on my laptop hard drive instead of the external?

Thanks.

[verndog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

That's going to be a problem, because he need to find "/boot". Where are you going to put that?

If you want only Windows on your internel HD then you may be able to write grub onto the eHD and then have Windows boot loader point to it, but that gets complicated, especially with grub2.

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

I guess then that I will stay only with windows. Now my question is how can I get windows to work again :S?

[verndog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

Try this:
1. Boot up with your Windows XP disc.

2. Select the option Recovery Console.

3. At the prompt, type "fdisk /mbr" (without the quotes of course)
edit: if that doesn't work, it might be "fixboot" or "fixmbr"

Also, you can install Ubuntu using Wubi method. that way its safer for you.

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

I try using fixboot and fixmbr (those are the right ones in my case), it says that both of them succeed but I'm still not able to get into Windows. I keep getting:

GRUB loading
error: no such disk
grub rescue>

I don't really know what to do know to fix :S

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

I'm starting to Panic, I can't reinstall to the external HDD. I'm trying to install it with the hope that maybe that way I'll be able to get into Windows .

Any help Please!

[verndog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

I'm starting to Panic, I can't reinstall to the external HDD. I'm trying to install it with the hope that maybe that way I'll be able to get into Windows .

Any help Please!

No reason to panic, nothing is lost, just need restore you boot loader. Make sure external HD is removed then try the commands again using XP recovery disk.

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

Alright, I did all that and I still wasn't able to get into windows. I reinstalled it into the external HDD but kept getting the same. So I used the live cd to back everything on my hard drive and installed it along side windows. Now works and Kubuntu is there, not a lot of space for it, only 9 GB but it works. I'm going to leave it like this until I reformat later on. I rather not to break anything else :P

Now I'm going to start learning Kubuntu.

[Snowhog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

We can probably still assist you, and you'll learn some things as well.

No that you have both systems functional, boot into Kubuntu. When you are at the desktop, open a console. Two ways to do this:

1) K Menu (button - lower left corner) > Applications > System > Konsole
2) Alt+F2 and type konsole

With the console open, type:

sudo fdisk -l
cat /etc/fstab
sudo blkid

Then copy all of the output - scroll to the top of the first listing, position your mouse pointer to the left of the first character on the first line. Left-click and drag down until the last line of the third commands output is fully highlighted. Then right-click and choose Copy (or just press Ctrl+Shift+C) to copy the contents to the clip-board. You can then do a standard paste into your reply.

The output of these three commands will allow us to see how your system is setup - drive partitioning, formatting, identification of same.

[shadowknightd]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

david@deux-ex:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 100.0 GB, 100030242816 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 12161 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x69f807c0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 243 1951866 1b Hidden W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2 * 244 7402 57504667+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 7403 12161 38226667+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 7403 11065 29423016 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 11066 12108 8377866 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 12109 12161 425691 82 Linux swap / Solaris
david@deux-ex:~$ cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=8b381ecb-c238-4276-ad5a-db698d2c1be9 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=d3a7c53b-064c-42d2-98eb-c76f63f8fa47 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
david@deux-ex:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="RECOVERY" UUID="9877-489A" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda2: UUID="0E78173778171D51" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="8CA8FFD6A8FFBCB0" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda6: UUID="8b381ecb-c238-4276-ad5a-db698d2c1be9" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda7: UUID="d3a7c53b-064c-42d2-98eb-c76f63f8fa47" TYPE="swap"




That's the output of the three commands, thanks for the help.

[verndog]

Re: Problem booting windows after installing Kubuntu.

Now we need grub.cfg output. This is why I usually suggest running the boot-info-script when dealing with grub issues. Everything about booting should be there in one file.

If you don't mind download boot-info-script and output the RESULTS.txt back here.