Dual Boot Nightmare - Now XP won't boot either!

[Duncan Lithgow]

Richard Querin wrote:
> I've got a problem creating a working dual boot with XPHome and Ubuntu 
> 5.10. Following is a brief summary of what has happened. Any advice on 
> what to do?
> 
> 1. I had a working XPHome / Suse 9.2 dual boot machine. Grub came up 
> upon bootup and let me choose. I then decided last night to replace Suse 
> with the latest Ubuntu version.
> 
> 2. I used Partition magic to format the ext2 and swap partitions that 
> contained Suse.
> 
> 3. I installed Ubuntu from the CD and it worked without problem. The 
> grub installer notified me that it recognized XP installed on the NTFS 
> partition and would install grub to this MBR. No problem.
> 
> 4. When I rebooted, grub failed to start and it just went straight to 
> XP. I rebooted the machine a few times to confirm this behaviour.
> 
> 5. After looking at some threads on the net I tried manually installed 
> grub by using a Live CD of Ubuntu 5.04 that I also had. I carried this 
> out as explained and it kept giving me an error 17 no matter what drive 
> I chose (more on my drive info later).
> 
> 6. I then used XP recovery console to rewrite the MBR. Then I 
> reinstalled Ubuntu 5.10 and this time tried setting the ext2 partition 
> as bootable (I didn't change the bootable setting for the xp partition..)
> 
> 7. Now the machine does NOT boot to XP at all. I get the word "GRUB" and 
> a flashing cursor and the machine hangs. The only way I can get into the 
> machine is via the Ubuntu 5.04 live CD. But I'm really lost trying to 
> fix it from there. I've tried several things (without truly knowing what 
> I'm doing) and nothing I try works.
> 
> 8. I want to run Ubuntu 5.10 but I am more interested in just getting 
> back to making XP bootable! Running the recovery to rewrite the MBR 
> doesn't work. I've tried re-running the Ubuntu install and setting the 
> XP partition as the only one that is bootable (as was displayed during 
> the original install) but it doesn't work. Suse 9.2 handled all this 
> without problem..
> 
> 9. Here's my drive info. Maybe having the ext2 partition on a different 
> drive than XP or having XP on a SATA drive is the problem? I'm getting 
> pretty desperate now!
> 
> IDE1 slave (hdb) - 160GB
>    #1 primary  100 GB  ntfs   hdb1
>    #5 logical   57 GB  ext2   hdb5 (ubuntu installed here)
>    #6 logical  2.2 GB  swap   swap
>    
> SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 160GB
>    #1 primary 75.5 GB  ntfs   sda1 (where XP is installed - marked as 
> bootable)
>    #5 logical 84.5 GB  ntfs   sda5
> 
> 
> Sorry for the long-winded explanation. ANY help to get XP booting again 
> would be appreciated. I need these data and apps!
> 
> RQ
> 

Stay calm - lots of people have been here and as a rule, nothing gets 
lost with all this hastle.

Here's what I did:
1. Use the Windows CD to boot rescue mode and rerun fixmbr
2. Reinstall Ubuntu, but make sure you:
    a. make a seperate /boot partition (I think 100MB is the recommended 
size)
    b. make sure it finds windows and has it as oine of the boot options 
for grub
    c. Do not allow ubuntu to write grub to mbr, that will overright 
windows mbr and can lead to problems (I'm guessing that's what you've 
done) - it must put it into the /boot partition
3. Make sure the /boot partition is marked/flaged 'bootable'

Try now.

I got so fedup with all this crap that I have windows on the primary 
partition and *nix on the slave. I use grub only to choose between *nix 
OS's  - I use a floppy with gag on which handles which partition to find 
boot information. My bios is then set to check for bootable floopy at 
startup. If the gag floppy is there, it boots grub, otherwise windows. 
This way pretty much nothing can interfere with the pesky windows mbr.

Check about overwriting the MBR, some people have said I shouldn't do 
it. It worked for me, but as they say "it may work for you or it may eat 
all the cheese in your house"

Duncan