8.04 dual-boot w/ XP: - installation problems

[Eberhard Roloff]

Alec Ross schrieb:
> Hi,
> 
> I've just installed 8.04 from a DVD.  I wanted to get a dual boot with 
> an existing XP installation.
> 
> During the (default) partitioning, I had an error reporting that some 
> data could not be written back to disk.
> 
> I went back to the previous page, and re-tried.  This time no failure 
> was reported.
> 
> However, on booting, and entering grub, the only OSs listed are Ubuntu:
> 
>     8.04 Kernel 2.6 ...
>     "                      (recovery ...
>     ", memtest86+
> 
> 
> Is this showing that the earlier error has lost my XP partition?  What, 
> if anything, might I do to attempt recovery?
> 
First of all, you should check whether your XP partitions still exist 
(or not).
Either use a CD-Boot Disk, ex. damssmalllinux, Ubuntu, Knoppix, RIP 
Linux (recovery is possible Linux) ...
or, you use your existing ubuntu and use a commandline, then ex.
sudo cfdisk /dev/sda , asuming that your disk in question is /dev/sda.

This will show you, what partitions are seen on that disk. XP partions 
are usually labelled as "ntfs" or, very rare nowadays, "fat32", "vfat" 
(or similar).

gparted will do, as well.

Depending on the results you can either adjust grub to include the 
existing XP install and proceed from there. Or, if there is none, I am 
afraid, that you are one of the lucky guys that work with Linux and 
ONLY with Linux ;-)), i.e. your installation and data will be gone.

If the latter is the case, you can try with tools like RIP Linux, but 
imho, while your mileage will vary, your chances to recover XP ntfs 
data from overwritten partions is close to null.

But this is no disaster, since you can always play back your backups 
that you made before you even thought about repartitioning your 
harddisk, did you?

Kind regards and good luch
Eberhard