Windows 7 dramas

[zappa]

Beersmith has native deb packages for 32 & 64 bit Ubuntu. Keep meaning to see if I can repackage it as an rpm.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Beersmith has native deb packages for 32 & 64 bit Ubuntu. Keep meaning to see if I can repackage it as an rpm.

Nice.

 

[Crusty]

I installed Ubuntu supposedly as a duel boot setup with windows 7 & somethings gone haywire.
I shrunk my C drive by 60GB. Plenty of storage still on C & the new free space is drive B. I booted via USB stick & went through installation process with Ubuntu. I dragged the installation size to 15GB for Ubuntu. The choice to install Ubuntu alongside windows was not there & instead it said install alongside files. Under that it said all my photos, music etc would be there so away we went. After installation, I have a list of options to select which seems normal but I have two windows 7 options,

Windows 7 loader on / dev / sda 1
Windows 7 loader on / dev / sda 2

Neither of these work for some reason. I select them & I get disc read error, WTF have I done.

Anyone know what to do to get windows back on track? I tried running a repair disc, windows 7 32-bit & windows fires up like in safe mode & goes through the motions & says to restart. I restart & get the grub menu but they still don't work.

Looks like a trip to the computer tech man.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Mmm...Win 7 does not like to play well with other OS's.

What you need first defrag Windows ( sometimes several times ) then do a disk clean up.

Then within windoz you need to shrink the partition and allocate free space on the HDD. The free space will be where you install Ubuntu
.
Ufortunatly you did not do this, but if it starts in safe mode then all is not lost. It means it will work.

What I would do is boot up Ubuntu on your stick and then copy any important files etc from the win partition onto another usb stick, just in case. Unfortunatly finding your important stuff in win is not as easy as ubuntu due to the fact that windoz puts it all over the place wheras ubuntu will put everything in the /home directory

Evrything in Win will still be there. I just havnt done a win rescue from safe mode for a long time so cant remember the exact process.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Boot up Ubuntu on your stick and go to the file viewer or disk manager ( disk manager is the better option ) and it should show your usb stick and the HDD that win is on. Linux does not show disks drives like windows will, IE a: b: c: etc but rather as a "device" /dev . The sda will relate to the partitions on that device. sda1 = a: sda2 = b:

You need to find out what the biggest dev/sda is to know where windows is. You will prob see /dev/sda1 = 10mb and dev/sda2=60gb and dev/sda4 =15gb. Dev/sda1 is your bootloader partition.

Going to get complicated from now on but maybe you need to re-write your boot loader to look at windows as /dev/sda2.

Dont have a quick fix atm but windows should be safe.
Just see if you can see files in the windows partition with ubuntu. If you can then all is good....basically

 

[zappa]

Do you still have the USB stick plugged in? If so, remove it. USB sticks are just another serial block device, so USB may be seen as sda and your windows drive as sdb. If that fails, boot up using safe mode with command prompt and try a bootrec /fixmbr. This will reinstall your master boot record, which occurs on disk before the partition table so its a safe operation.

 

[Crusty]

Thanks guys.
I have a few options to try. I did partition the drive so had 60GB of unallocated space for Ubuntu.
I cannot access windows at all. I just keep coming back to the grub screen with no way to access the windows partition.
USB stick has been removed. I will get into the bios & boot up from the usb stick & see what I can do from there.
I've tried f8 but will not work so can't access a safe mode either. How do I boot up using safe mode with the command prompt.

Note to self: Don't touch anything you know nothing about you idiot!

 

[zappa]

Sorry, you referred to booting up in rescue mode like booting into safe mode. That's what I meant by safe mode.

Anyway, you can't just shrink your Windows partition, create a new partition and install to that. You also need to shrink your Windows filesystem (which I believe is what Stu was alluding to). To do that, you would nornally use a tool like ntfsresize, but I'm not sure how the Ubuntu installer handles this these days. It may be automatic, in which case everything should still be there. Somwhere.

Boot up in rescue mode and try the bootrec /fixmbr trick. If that doesn't work, don't sweat it too much. There's other things you can try, some of which involves more bootrec, others using the grub cli. Have a google for "grub cli boot windows" to see how you can manually locate your Windows partition (if it still exists) and boot into windows.

 

[Crusty]

Sorry, you referred to booting up in rescue mode like booting into safe mode. That's what I meant by safe mode.

Anyway, you can't just shrink your Windows partition, create a new partition and install to that. You also need to shrink your Windows filesystem (which I believe is what Stu was alluding to). To do that, you would nornally use a tool like ntfsresize, but I'm not sure how the Ubuntu installer handles this these days. It may be automatic, in which case everything should still be there. Somwhere.

Boot up in rescue mode and try the bootrec /fixmbr trick. If that doesn't work, don't sweat it too much. There's other things you can try, some of which involves more bootrec, others using the grub cli. Have a google for "grub cli boot windows" to see how you can manually locate your Windows partition (if it still exists) and boot into windows.

How do i boot up in rescue mode?
Do I hit the C for the command prompt & then type in bootrec /fixmbr

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Ubuntu stopped doing the resize partition thing a while back as it was to risky.

Windowz has a funny bootloader, basically designed to stop you wanting to do things like, god forbid, dual load a different operating system onto your hard drive

First piece of advice. Leave it. Just boot up your USB stick and enjoy ubuntu. It will not affect the win install on your internall hard drive. Everything you do on Ununtu started from your usb stick will stay on the usb stick.

The great advantage is you csn use your usb stick to retrieve files from your original hard drive, AND it can be used to fix your bootloader issue

A boot loader is a small program that determines what system to start when you first turn on your computer. As win7 was your default your bootloader will want to load win 7. When you add more than 1operating system the boot loader needs to be changed. Windozz does not like it when you change the boot loader simply because it expects to see a windoz boot loader. Its a PITA but fixable

I had 4 different operating systems on the same hard drive..and Windoz allways played the FU card untill you told it who was boss

 

[zappa]

Ok. How about I point you to an official Microsoft knowledgebase article on restoring your MBR?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

The gist of it is to use your Windows installation media to boot into rescue mode, then open command prompt (should be an icon for it). From within command prompt, you can issue your commands. Good news is that if rescue mode finds your Windows installation, chances of recovery are high.

If you don't have installation media, try using the grub cli to boot your existing Windows environment (google is your friend here).

 

[Toper]

It's waaaay beyond my techie knowledge,which is virtually nil,but you can try the Ubuntu community help site for help too http://community.ubuntu.com/

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

MBR = Master Boot Record.

That is what your boot loader looks at when working out what system to load and where to find it on your hard drive. Ie the dev/sda or a:

Do Not **** with the MBR unless you are VERY VERY sure you have mapped your drive.

If you see ANYTHING to do with making changes to the MBR DO NOT ACCEPT ANY CHANGES.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

And get onto the ubuntu community forum.

Its your friend ( bit like AHB but with engineers who know there **** ) and its free. And awsome.

The guys on there will guide you thru it and will help ypu more than we can

 

[Crusty]

It's way over my head.
Ubuntu is installed on my hard drive now so booting from the memory stick or without it just gets me to the grub menu.
I'll have a hunt round on the community forum to see if I can get some help.
This is my third day trying to sort it out & I'm ready to throw the the thing over the bloody fence.
Thanks for the help guys.

 

[zappa]

MBR = Master Boot Record.

That is what your boot loader looks at when working out what system to load and where to find it on your hard drive. Ie the dev/sda or a:

Do Not **** with the MBR unless you are VERY VERY sure you have mapped your drive.

If you see ANYTHING to do with making changes to the MBR DO NOT ACCEPT ANY CHANGES.

The MBR is what BIOS looks for on the first sector (bootsector) of a disk to pass control to for the next phase in booting your OS. The second stage boot. Cerainly scary if you're playing with it without suitable knowledge and experience. It used to be a big target for virus writers, because they could inject code prior to your OS booting, which is why you should never allow random tools to write to your bootsector (and the term rightfully instills fear). However, in this case, using official Microsoft tools to restore your Windows bootloader to the MBR is a sane course of action after a botched grub install when you're not comfortable using the grub cli. In fact, grub is installed by default into your MBR (replacing the default Windows bootloader). So, I'm advocating official Windows tools to restore the original Windows bootloader under guidance of an official Microsoft "HOWTO". I certainly wouldn't recommend you play around with it for kicks, unless you like breaking **** in order to recover it.

My recommendation stands, but feel free to seek other sources of help.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

**** microsoft and their bootloaders.

Microsoft "want" you to use "their tools" to restore your system to the way they want you to use it

You can use what ever boot loader you like.

The fuckers make it hard for you but you dont need to take it from them.

**** Microsoft.

 

[zappa]

In sentiment, I certainly agree. As a Unix engineer with close to 20 years experience (and the majority of that with various Linux distributions), I'm painfully aware of the many variables that may be in play here though. I (or someone else) could spend hours going backward and forward, stepping through troubleshooting and a fix. Or, I could point in the direction of least resistence. I chose to do the latter, but the encouragement to point towards the Ubuntu forums is also a great idea. There's going to be plenty of people more enthusiastic than myself on a Friday night or Saturday morning that will be more than willing to hold Crusty's hand through the process and may very well have him up and running in dual boot with both Windows and Ubuntu. My solution would (hopefully) get him back up and running in short order with Windows only, but Ubuntu would still be there and the Ubuntu install disk couls be used to re-attempt the grub install. Unix engineers are well known for their laziness...

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

If you have a PC with the "you can only use Micro$oft" BIOS lock then your ******...

But as a USB stick can be booted with Linux then things are good...

Unfortunatly you will have to go thru the " windows wont play well" issues because you decided you wanted free choice with an operating system that is free,as in free to the general pubic to use how and when they like. And the only way Micro$oft can thwart your free choice is to make it difficult for you to install a different operating system on a machine that you own that has there existing system.

Bit like buying a car and being told you can only get it serviced by the dealer,and only the dealer can supply you with new tyres and you should only use petrol from a manufacturer supplier.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Sorry...but I have a dislike for M$ and the way they conduct business....