Bios boots after installing Pinguy in dual boot w/xp

[dicktster]

Hi all, I was given a Asus Eee 1000HD w/ xp and installed Pinguy 11.04 in second partition and now, when booting up, it goes to the Bios and none of the partitions, so, I have been doing a hard shutdown. My question is, how or what happened and how can I correct it? Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, dick

[velikij]

First, boot the Linux live CD and bring up a shell window, and run

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

That will print out a partition table showing how the disk is set up. Your computer probably has more that 2 partitions originally, and likely had a special diagnostic partition for testing. Please post the partition table that was printed out.

Also, you may not have made the right selection when partitioning the disk early in the Linux installation. You should have selected custom partitioning and carefully defined the format (like ext3, ext4) and so on for the partition(s) for Linux.

It's possible the MBR (master boot record) was wiped out. It should have been replaced by the Grub2 boot loader.

[velikij]

Note to others - this version of Linux is essentially Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) without the Unity desktop software, so installation should be the same.

[velikij]

Your Asus netbook may have come with a CD for restoring XP home and the MBR. In that case it may be some 'hidden' partition contains restore files for XP. But it's possible that incorrect partitioning with the Linux installer could wipe that out.

[Mudgen]

velikij, you sound on top of the general issues, but consider that OP may also have an inadvertently hosed up MBR, or a problem with the boot settings in the BIOS. My expertise is in Red Hat/Fedora, so I'll leave the detailed assistance to the Ubuntu gurus.

[dicktster]

Thank you all for your replies, but.
I did not receive any disks, plus, any live disk I try to boot always comes up to "Bios".
I have tried to reload Pinguy, tried to boot Gparted, xp pro, etc., but, it always boots to Bios.

[Mudgen]

Thank you all for your replies, but.
I did not receive any disks, plus, any live disk I try to boot always comes up to "Bios".
I have tried to reload Pinguy, tried to boot Gparted, xp pro, etc., but, it always boots to Bios.

Thanks for the additional info. You have a problem with the BIOS boot settings. Google "Asus EEE boot settings" for a variety of information related to that.

[dicktster]

Thanks mudgen, will give it a shot.

[Mudgen]

Thanks mudgen, will give it a shot.

To be clear, you probably also have a bootloader problem on the hard drive. Getting it booted from something else should help with troubleshooting that.

These Asus EEE's are quirky little beasts, friend has one. The XP on his had strange little proprietary things done to it out of the box, like no "Start" button.

[dicktster]

To be clear, you probably also have a bootloader problem on the hard drive. Getting it booted from something else should help with troubleshooting that.

These Asus EEE's are quirky little beasts, friend has one. The XP on his had strange little proprietary things done to it out of the box, like no "Start" button.

Thanks Mudgen, I tried your other suggestion, i.e., quick and quiet boot, etc., no dice, cannot get around the Bios booting up.