Ubuntu 9.10 Completely wiped Windows from my hard drive.

[Johnnywraith]

I dual boot with Ubuntu and Windows, and I just about an hour ago upgraded to 9.10 from Jaunty. After I restarted my computer two versions of Ubuntu could be booted, Windows was not on the GRUB menu. I am new to programming, and am completely clueless as to why this happened, and how I can fix this. Can someone please help me?

[Kieren]

Are you sure Windows isn't there? It could just not be listed in your GRUB. What is the output of:

sudo fdisk -l

[Johnnywraith]

I think it's not there. I searched through the BIOS hoping I could find it. Here's the output.

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe0000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 6 1311 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 1312 14336 104623312+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 14337 19452 41094270 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14337 19236 39359218+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 19237 19452 1734988+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 1023 MB, 1023933952 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 260 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7688 * 512 = 3936256 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x20202020

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 21 80293+ 0 Empty
Partition 1 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(0, 1, 1) logical=(0, 1, 2)
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(9, 254, 63) logical=(20, 111,
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2 21 261 919610+ b W95 FAT32
Partition 2 has different physical/logical beginnings (non-Linux?):
phys=(10, 0, 1) logical=(20, 111, 9)
Partition 2 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(124, 123, 62) logical=(260, 15, 61)

[Kieren]

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 6 1311 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 * 1312 14336 104623312+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 14337 19452 41094270 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 14337 19236 39359218+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 19237 19452 1734988+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Nope, it's still there NTFS is your Windows so the 2 sections I have made bold are where your Windows is.

All you need to do now is add this partition to your GRUB. Unfortunately Ubuntu 9.10 has started to use GRUB2 and I've not got round to playing with it yet so I won't be able to help you out. Someone else will be able to take over from here or you can search Google on how to use GRUB2

[Johnnywraith]

omg THANK YOU SO MUCH! This is my moms computer and if I can't figure this out before she gets home in the afternoon then I'm done for. She gets confused easily and prefers Windows which is the only reason I want it on here. Thank you so much, I'm going to google how to use GRUB2 and hopefully get it back to how it was before.

[Kieren]

Okay well check back if you need any more help with setting it up

[yancek]

This command has worked for some on Ubuntu:

sudo update-grub2

If that doesn't do it try the command below and then re-run above command.

sudo apt-get install os-prober

[Kieren]

This command has worked for some on Ubuntu:

sudo update-grub2

If that doesn't do it try the command below and then re-run above command.

sudo apt-get install os-prober

That's simple enough then. Johnnywraith, you can see what happened when I ran that command. I have made bold the options that mine found:

kieren@George-Michael:$ sudo update-grub2
[sudo] password for kieren:
Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
grub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb6.  Check your device.map.

grub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb6.  Check your device.map.

Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Microsoft Windows XP Professional on /dev/sdb1
grub-probe: error: Cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sdb1.  Check your device.map.

done

[Johnnywraith]

it worked. I've gotta restart and I went to blogs.koolwal.net
and they said I've gotta input a bunch of code if Windows doesnt pop up. Unfortunately it didn't pop up, so I'm going to try their advice.

[peteh]

There's a fairly good tutorial here specifically for Grub2 in Ubuntu.
This should help you.
Good luck.