I need some tech support...

[bradyarz]

I'm usually on the other end of this type of plea, but I've never encountered this before, and I was hoping someone here could help me out.

I run a dual-boot setup with ubuntu and xp, each in their own partition. I have a 3rd partition for my ~70 gigs of music. I usually boot into ubuntu, but I've been working on setting up a remote desktop with xp so I can access music and files from work. My xp install has been giving me trouble, so I backed up my important files into the extra space on my music partition and reinstalled xp.

Now, grub is gone and I can't boot into ubuntu. When I boot into xp, I can't see my music partition. Not good.

I ran ubuntu from a live cd, and tried to fix grub with a few commands from the terminal. No dice. Something about grub error 17. Apparently it's an error many other people have had, but their fixes didn't work for me. I was also hoping I could at least see my music partition from the live cd to at least verify my data is still there. Again, no dice.

So:
1) I need to get grub working again so I can get back into my linux partition
2) I need to get linux and windows to see my music partition so I can get my music and data back

Any ideas, or do I need to pay someone big bucks to fix this?

 

[AmishFury]

when you reinstalled XP did you by any chance reformat the drive? i've actually had this completely screw up partitions once

 

[bradyarz]

i didn't reformat the whole drive, just the boot partition.

i discovered active partition recovery, so i'm currently running a scan. it did find the music partition, but i have to wait for the scan to finish to know if it worked or not. i won't be too torn up if i end up having to reinstall linux; i used it for simple day to day tasks. most of the files i used on a frequent basis i actually kept stored in the windows partition and just accessed them from linux.

 

[DrColossus11]

Reinstalling Xp messes with the MBR and tends to overwrite GRUB.

Try this: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/reinstall-ubuntu-grub-bootloader-after-windows-wipes-it-out/

 

[bradyarz]

Reinstalling Xp messes with the MBR and tends to overwrite GRUB.

Try this: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/reinstall-ubuntu-grub-bootloader-after-windows-wipes-it-out/

That's actually exactly what I tried to do, and it came up with the error. I'll play with it some more, but I may just reinstall ubuntu, as I just got my data partition back. I found out that active partition recovery is only free till you want to restore the partitions it finds... grrr.

 

[TheBigO]

Not sure how effective it is in your situation, but try recuva

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

 

[denim]

I've put XP into a VM on my Mac. I don't let it out, similar to keeping a bear in a cage.

 

[Seraphim]

Great googly moogly!


Are these guys speaking English?!

 

[chfair]

tried another boot loader such as LILO? i recall having similar trouble a few years ago and i could not get GRUB reinstall to work correctly (grub installed but the menu choices would not load OS's), think my short term solution was putting LILO as the boot loader then fixing GRUB after getting back into linux.

been a long time and i am terribly out of practice with linux but pretty sure there is a easy LILO install guide somewhere. was not a fan of the boot loader but it worked as a short term fix back then.

hope you get it worked out

 

[crankymoose]

I had a similar problem, XP wouldn't reinstall after installing a version of Linux on a hard drive as you know it is common, it's been a while but I do recall strangely enough that either Vista or win7 would install on the drive while XP wouldn't.

One tool I did try was Gnome partition editor you download and burn it as a CD and boot from it and it will let you see the current partitions and manipulate or change them as needed including into Windows compatible or Linux what ever you want to install first, it's pretty simple to use and it may have worked but it has been a while I don't remember, obviously use care when reformatting to make sure you choose the correct partition.

As a last option you could replace the drive and if assuming the above tool is showing your partion is still in tact you should be able to mount it and recover or transfer the data to a new drive and new partition if desired.

 

[bradyarz]

tried another boot loader such as LILO? i recall having similar trouble a few years ago and i could not get GRUB reinstall to work correctly (grub installed but the menu choices would not load OS's), think my short term solution was putting LILO as the boot loader then fixing GRUB after getting back into linux.

been a long time and i am terribly out of practice with linux but pretty sure there is a easy LILO install guide somewhere. was not a fan of the boot loader but it worked as a short term fix back then.

hope you get it worked out

I had a similar problem, XP wouldn't reinstall after installing a version of Linux on a hard drive as you know it is common, it's been a while but I do recall strangely enough that either Vista or win7 would install on the drive while XP wouldn't.

One tool I did try was Gnome partition editor you download and burn it as a CD and boot from it and it will let you see the current partitions and manipulate or change them as needed including into Windows compatible or Linux what ever you want to install first, it's pretty simple to use and it may have worked but it has been a while I don't remember, obviously use care when reformatting to make sure you choose the correct partition.

As a last option you could replace the drive and if assuming the above tool is showing your partion is still in tact you should be able to mount it and recover or transfer the data to a new drive and new partition if desired.

I'll definitely have to remember those tricks. I did manage to get the data back, but I ended up having to reinstall ubuntu. Not as huge of a pita as reinstalling all my programs and settings for xp, but I was still slightly miffed that I had to do it in the first place.

 

[rm71]

Great googly moogly!


Are these guys speaking English?!

I guess some of our shaving language may sound the same to the uninitiated

 

[bradyarz]

I guess some of our shaving language may sound the same to the uninitiated

"yesterday for my sotd i did a 3 pass w/x/atg. face lathered with a custom 24mm tgn 2-band finest set at 45mm in vintage butterscotch and a triple-milled tallow travel stick. bbs, no weepers, and finished off with a dash of the veg."

maybe we should start the "how arcane can i make my sotd sound" thread.

 

[wdwrx]

The rest of the thread made no sense to me at all .... but this was perfectly clear:

"yesterday for my sotd i did a 3 pass w/x/atg. face lathered with a custom 24mm tgn 2-band finest set at 45mm in vintage butterscotch and a triple-milled tallow travel stick. bbs, no weepers, and finished off with a dash of the veg."...

 

[cswann1]

I'm doubtful that this is helpful, but since I've been using 7, XP seems more and more like a dull-witted country cousin.

You might think of using this as an excuse to move to 7.

Good luck!!

 

[bradyarz]

I'm doubtful that this is helpful, but since I've been using 7, XP seems more and more like a dull-witted country cousin.

You might think of using this as an excuse to move to 7.

Good luck!!

got xp free back when i was a student. microsoft doesn't seem to want to give me student discounts anymore...