I cannot boot into Windows anymore

[SickVEmpire]

Greetings everyone, it's my third day of Ubuntu and everything is great, just learning it more and more, but still, I have some problems with the boot sections.

First of all, after upgrading to 10.04, I could not boot into any loader... so I tried to repair the grub with a live cd. I could not do it, so I installed 9.10 again... That seemed to solve the problem. I have the list containing Ubuntu 9.10, as well as 10.04, but also Windows XP. THe problem is that whenever I select XP, that little bllinking white line stays at the top left of the screen and nothing happens.

I am a weird person and so does my computer (unfortunately...). I know these things should not happen. Is there anything I could do with Windows, instead of reinstalling it? I tried with fixmbr but it did not work.

THanks in advanced for your patience in reading this piece.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Did GRUB Menu appear after executing fixmbr command? Post the output of sudo fdisk -l command and contents of /boot/grub/grub.cfg file here.

sudo fdisk -l

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[SickVEmpire]

No, it only appeared after installing 9.10. This is the content.

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x16341634

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5737 46082421 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5738 24320 149267947+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 5738 11474 46082421 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 11475 24320 103185463+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0e5c0e5b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 4844 38909398+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 4845 19456 117370890 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 4845 9830 40050013+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb6 13896 19456 44668701 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb7 9831 13722 31262458+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb8 13723 13895 1389591 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

[Feeyo]

Please post your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file also.

[Rubberman]

Greetings everyone, it's my third day of Ubuntu and everything is great, just learning it more and more, but still, I have some problems with the boot sections.

First of all, after upgrading to 10.04, I could not boot into any loader... so I tried to repair the grub with a live cd. I could not do it, so I installed 9.10 again... That seemed to solve the problem. I have the list containing Ubuntu 9.10, as well as 10.04, but also Windows XP. THe problem is that whenever I select XP, that little bllinking white line stays at the top left of the screen and nothing happens.

I am a weird person and so does my computer (unfortunately...). I know these things should not happen. Is there anything I could do with Windows, instead of reinstalling it? I tried with fixmbr but it did not work.

THanks in advanced for your patience in reading this piece.

Hmmm. Not able to boot Windows... and this is a bad thing?

Actually, I suspect that you have nuked your Windows installation. Boot into Ubuntu, and then try to mount and access the Windows partition. If you can see the Windows system files, then you cat at least recover your data from the Windows system (hopefully). However, if you reinstall Windows, then it will nuke your Linux installation. Sounds like a lose-lose situation to me. Anyway, see if you can access Windows data from Linux and let us know what you find.