Dual boot GRUB help

[lwpack]

Hi.

I am attempting to dual boot with XP and Ubuntu. I had XP installed first, and then I installed Ubuntu. After installing Ubuntu, XP would no longer boot. When selecting it from the GRUB menu, I would see BOOT MGR MISSING.

I then used the SuperGrub cd to fix my windows boot, but now I can no longer boot into Ubuntu. The GRUB menu doesn't come up at all, it just boots straight into windows. I attempted to reinstall GRUB using the SuperGrub disk, but it didn't work. To complicate things, I have two hard drives. XP is installed in sdb1 and Ubuntu in sdb5. The other partitions contain data. Any ideas? Below is the result of my fdisk command. Thanks for the help.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000554fa

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 121601 976760001 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x454ca824

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 7012 56323858+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 7013 13941 55657192+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb3 13942 121602 864779264 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb5 7013 13652 53335768+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 13653 13941 2321361 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[lwpack]

I managed to reinstall GRUB by following the tutorial here:

How to install Grub from a live Ubuntu cd. - Ubuntu Forums

Except, instead of typing "setup (hd0)" I typed "setup (hd1)". I don't know why that worked, but it did. However, now I'm back to where I was originally. I can boot into ubuntu but not windows. When I select the XP option from GRUB, it says BOOT MGR MISSING. I don't know what to do.

[Jonathan183]

Can you post the results of

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst
ls /dev/disk/by-uuid -l

[lwpack]

GRUB menu:

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-15-generic
uuid 3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-15-generic root=UUID=3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24 ro quiet splash vga=769
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-15-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-15-generic (recovery mode)
uuid 3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-15-generic root=UUID=3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-15-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
uuid 3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sdb1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1


lwpack@lwpack-desktop:~$ ls /dev/disk/by-uuid -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-09-07 08:10 2274ac81-ae47-4a30-afb6-bee579dfaeeb -> ../../sdb6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-09-07 08:10 3572C3D6726A5702 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-09-07 08:10 3A387BBA387B73AB -> ../../sdb3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-09-07 08:10 3e45e96c-2abb-453b-ac26-2a15240c3e24 -> ../../sdb5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-09-07 08:10 6A3863E43863AE2F -> ../../sdb1

[Jonathan183]

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sdb1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

Entry looks to be correct ... are you sure XP is on sdb1 rather than sda1? you could try

title XP on hd0,0
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

If this does not work can you disconnect one of the drives and get XP to boot fixing the boot with SuperGrub again? and check partition size for XP - and check XP bootloader config file ...

[lwpack]

Hi.

XP is definitely on sdb1, not sda1. I will try disabling the sda hard drive in my bios and then using the SuperGrub cd as you suggested. Sounds like it's a windows problem though, so I'll check out windows forums. Do you happen to know where the XP bootloader config file is supposed to be? Thanks for the help.

[Jonathan183]

I posted instructions here to use Windows bootloader rather than grub ... checked on Win2k and XP bootloader should be the same ... it has filenames etc and entry into

[Lostfarmer]

It would appear that the whole story is not being told.

BOOT MGR MISSING

Is not an XP error, could be a 3rd party boot manager , but more likely is Vista's boot manager.

What is on sda1 ?

[lwpack]

It would appear that the whole story is not being told.
Is not an XP error, could be a 3rd party boot manager , but more likely is Vista's boot manager.

What is on sda1 ?

sda1 is an NTFS data partition. I do not have Vista installed. I am not using a 3rd party boot manager. I'm not sure what you mean by saying it isn't an XP error. If you google "bootmgr missing xp" you will see there are loads of xp users who have gotten this.

[Lostfarmer]

Did you ever have Vista installed on any of the hdds ? or try to install it. or Win7 ?

I did google and the ones (4) that I read all had Vista/Win 7 installed or attempted.

XP does not use bootmgr.

I typed "setup (hd1)

If sdb as your boot device in BIOS remove the 'map' statements from menu.lst. They are needed only if grub is on a different hdd then XP. I'm thinking (could be wrong) that use of map will point to sda and might have been formatted under Vista.