my ubuntu had disappered ! help me !

[drwolf]

i have dual booting dell inspiron 6400 and recently i installed win7 msdn to find that my ubuntu 8.10 had disappeared from the list of operating systems .. although i had installed win7 on a separate partition ..help me plz

[reed9]

Yup, Windows doesn't play nice with other operating systems. You need to reinstall the linux bootloader, GRUB.

“How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first) - Ubuntu Forums
The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step

[wrpp]

Win 7 has most probably disabled your bootloader.

[drwolf]

i have done all these things but no benifit ..i dont want 2 lose my win7 or my ubuntu ...any other ideas ?

[yancek]

i have dual booting dell inspiron 6400

What operating systems did you have that you were dual-booting?

i installed win7 msdn

I don't know what msdn is but, if you installed win7, it overwrote your master boot record. AFAIK, every version of windows always overwrites the master boot record without informing users, even if it is another version of windows.

my ubuntu 8.10 had disappeared from the list of operating systems

Obviously, see above. I assume you were booting whatever systems you had with Ubuntu Grub?? Your Ubuntu is most likely still there if you did install win7 on a different partition and you just need to modify boot files to access it.

The information you have given is enough so that we can make a lot of guesses about what you might do to fix things but definitely not enough for anyone to give specific informed advice.

I assume you want to boot win7 and Ubuntu with the Ubuntu Grub bootloader?

What do you have on your computer for OS's? Your first post seems to indicate you were dual-booting AND then installed win7 so you have three OS's, is that the case?

Do you still have the Ubuntu CD? Or any other Linux Live CD? If you load one in the drive and log in as root (sudo if Ubuntu) in a terminal type: fdisk -l (that's a Lower case Letter L) to get your partition information and post here.

Do you know how to mount partitions from the Live CD to access the /boot/grub/menu.lst file? If so, post it here. If not, respond and someone will explain it.

[drwolf]

Dual boot : vista + ubuntu
Win7 msdn = Win 7 ultimate
Istill have the ubuntu CD
I dont know how to mount partitions from Live CD
Thanx

[yancek]

You forgot this part. We need this partition information.

Do you still have the Ubuntu CD? Or any other Linux Live CD? If you load one in the drive and log in as root (sudo if Ubuntu) in a terminal type: fdisk -l (that's a Lower case Letter L) to get your partition information and post here.

Once you have obtained the partition information using the Live CD, while in a terminal in the Ubuntu Live CD as root you can mount the partition with Ubuntu. When you get the output of fdisk -l, you should see at least one Linux partition. The output would be similar to this:

/dev/hda3 1798 1860 506047+ 83 Linux

Above where it shows /dev/hda3 you will probably have /sda so you will need to note the partition name/number. Assume it is sda3 (if it is not make the change), to mount you would open the terminal and do the following:

sudo mkdir /mnt/ubuntu (this creates a temporary directory in the /mnt directory)
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda3 /mnt/ubuntu (mounts sda3 filesystem to /mnt/ubuntu)

While still in the terminal do:

sudo cat /mnt/ubuntu/boot/grub/menu.lst

This should show the contents of the Grub menu which you should post here to get specific instructions on changes necessary. You will then need to re-install Grub and someone will be able to tell you exactly what to enter to do that with this information.

I don't use Ubuntu so I'm not sure if you need 'sudo' in front of each command entered, just try it.