Stupid Dual Boot Slightly OT question

[Tony Arnold]

Jeff,

On 14/06/10 15:08, J wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 10:00, Mike McGinn <mikemcginn at mcginnweb.net> wrote:
> 
>> I did that when I first tried Linux a few years ago. I did not defrag my XP
>> partition so it was borked. It sounds like Mom over wrote part of Windows when
>> she installed Ubuntu. Otherwise it sounds like she is doing fine. When you
>> visit you will have to back up Ubu, reinstall Windows and probably reinstall
>> Ubuntu.
> 
> Indeed... and none of this would have happend, had she listened to
> instructions and NOT gone about installing until I was able to walk
> them through it, or do it for them :(  I'm hoping it won't come to
> reinstalling both... but if so, I'm hoping there's enough filesystem
> integrity left for me to at least retrieve data from the ntfs
> partition before going that route.
> 
> Wonder if Windows has a "repair" facility via their installer... I
> honestly don't know. I stopped being a "Windows Guy" back around Win98
> SE.  I've been a Linux guy since the mid-90s and honestly never cared
> enough about windows to keep the skills up.  Sigh...

She should be able to see the NTFS partition from Ubuntu. Should appear
as a file system in Nautilus, click on it and it should mount and show
the contents. Might be worth getting her to check if it all look
sensible. If so, then it's most likely a boot problem.

I didn't think defragging before resizing was a requirement these days.
I thought it was just recommended to speed up the resize, but I may be
wrong.

BTW, kudos to your mum for getting so far. Mine would not even have
dared tried!

Regards,
Tony.
-- 
Tony Arnold,                        Tel: +44 (0) 161 275 6093
Head of IT Security,                Fax: +44 (0) 870 136 1004
University of Manchester,           Mob: +44 (0) 773 330 0039
Manchester M13 9PL.                 Email: tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk