[yancek]

I tried to make the 227 GB Vista partition smaller, but it says that all 227 Gb is full and I know that's not right.

Not sure what's up with that but it's always a good idea to run disk defragmenter on windows before installing another OS. Also weird that vista shows as FAT16.

After installing ubuntu, are you able to boot to it?

[james3302]

Yea it boots to Ubuntu just fine. I tried to do a repair of Vista and it cannot find an Os to repair. I will research that some more and if I cannot fix it I will just re-install Vista. I want to resize the partitions too while Im doing that.

[yancek]

What does your /boot/grub/menu.lst file look like in ubuntu? Do you have an entry in your /etc/fstab file for vista? Post them if you can.

[james3302]

Here's the menu.lst file I did not copy the # lines(i assumed they were comments.

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=e095ba3f-9a4d-40e1-b6f4-d558d0104d49 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=e095ba3f-9a4d-40e1-b6f4-d558d0104d49 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

title Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet


here's the fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda3
UUID=e095ba3f-9a4d-40e1-b6f4-d558d0104d49 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda1
UUID=07D7-0A17 /media/sda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=340bce10-315c-4b1f-87fc-24bfc0d4dce1 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec 0 0

[yancek]

Here's something you might try. Log in to ubuntu, open the konsole(terminal) and as root type: grub. You should get a grub prompt which looks like (grub>)
Enter the following cmd: find /boot.ini. The response to the command should be:
(hd0,0). I expect you won't get any results but worth a try.

You don't have any entry for vista in your menu.lst and ubuntu usually detects windows and puts an entry there. Your windows entry should look like one of the following which you might try putting in menu.lst to see if either works.

title Vista
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader (hd0,0) +1

In the above entries, be sure there is a space before the -+-You didn't post your /etc/fstab. Just take a look and see if you have any entry for windows. Don't expect you will.

I think something bad happened to your vista because it is detected as FAT16 and windows has been using FAT32 or NTFS since W95.

Good Luck!

[james3302]

the response from find /boot.ini was File not Found.

Cannot edit menu.lst do not have the rights to only root does. I do not remember giving a password for the root user. I remember setting up the user name that Im using right now. Usually when I make system it asks for the password to do so and I give it the password that I am using and it works.

[devils casper]

I would suggest you to mount /dev/sda1 partition and check its contents. Back up data and re-install.

sudo mkdir /media/vista
sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /media/vista -o defaults,umask=0
ls /media/vista

[james3302]

I went into users and groups and changed the root password there to something that I knew. Logged off and tried to log in as root and the password I put in did not work. Now my root terminal screen will not start. so I cannot do the commands say said to do.

Now when I try and log in as root is says I cannot login as root on that screen. where do I login as root then?

[devils casper]

Press Alt+Ctrl+F1 and it will drop you at Command line prompt. Login and execute commands. Press Alt+Ctrl+F7 to switch back to GUI.

[james3302]

Ah great tip, I drug out my Unix manual from college to get some command line stuff down. Here's the contents of /media/vista-it's not pretty!

diags,temp are folders

autoexec.bat,autoexec.up,command.com,config.sys,co nfig.up,copyup.bat,
dellbio.bin,delldiag.ini,dellrmk.bin,himem.sys,oob edone.flg

So pretty much just system files and you would have copied over to boot from a windows CD.

I have a vista re-install CD from Dell. I will have to re-install it and it will kill this install of linux and then I would have to try and install again without screwing up Vista.