[Solved] Alright, I seriously screwed up big time.

Let me tell you of a wayward wannabe-techy. It all started this afternoon, when I figured I'd install a distribution of Linux. Which distro? Well, I was told I should start out with Ubuntu, seeing as how I had never used Linux before. So I pop in the disk to my computer, go through the install prompts, repartition my hard drive so that my Windows install was on one, Linux on the other. Later on, when I realized I needed to do something on my windows OS, I promptly restarted the system and selected "Windows 7 Loader" from the list.

Nothing.

Hm. Well, isn't that wonderful? So now, here I am with Ubuntu running (Quite well, actually,) and a completely intact Windows 7 Install on a seperate partition, of which I can not boot from. Is there any way that I can get this to work again, or will I have to format/install once more? And if so, can I just save an image of my W7 partition and format/replace the current installation with the image? Or would it give me the same problem?

Impressed Windows User,
~InlandTaipan

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Reply to InlandTaipan

Best answer

InlandTaipan wrote :

Let me tell you of a wayward wannabe-techy. It all started this afternoon, when I figured I'd install a distribution of Linux. Which distro? Well, I was told I should start out with Ubuntu, seeing as how I had never used Linux before. So I pop in the disk to my computer, go through the install prompts, repartition my hard drive so that my Windows install was on one, Linux on the other. Later on, when I realized I needed to do something on my windows OS, I promptly restarted the system and selected "Windows 7 Loader" from the list.

Nothing.

Hm. Well, isn't that wonderful? So now, here I am with Ubuntu running (Quite well, actually,) and a completely intact Windows 7 Install on a seperate partition, of which I can not boot from. Is there any way that I can get this to work again, or will I have to format/install once more? And if so, can I just save an image of my W7 partition and format/replace the current installation with the image? Or would it give me the same problem?

Impressed Windows User,
~InlandTaipan

It looks like one of two things happened. Either the Linux bootloader (GRUB) is mis-configured and isn't properly handing off the boot process to Windows 7's bootloader, or Windows 7's bootloader (I think it is still called NTLDR) is hosed. Both are fixable. Open up a terminal and post the output of the following two commands here and we can help you.

1. This tells us your disk partition layout:

Code :

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

2. This is your Linux bootloader config:

Code :

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Workstation: Under renovation. Opteron 6234, Supermicro H8QGL, 4x4 GB Corsair 1600C9
File server: 2x Xeon 5260, MSi MS-91A1, 2x2 GB PC2-5300R FB-DIMMS
HTPC: 2x Xeon LV 2.00 Sossaman, TYAN i7520SD, 6 B PC2-3200R
Reply to MU_Engineer

MU_Engineer wrote :

It looks like one of two things happened. Either the Linux bootloader (GRUB) is mis-configured and isn't properly handing off the boot process to Windows 7's bootloader, or Windows 7's bootloader (I think it is still called NTLDR) is hosed. Both are fixable. Open up a terminal and post the output of the following two commands here and we can help you.

1. This tells us your disk partition layout:

Code :

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

2. This is your Linux bootloader config:

Code :

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

1.
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe5b257f8

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 13 8716 69900907+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 8717 14593 47207002+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 8717 14347 45230976 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 14348 14593 1975963+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

2.
cat: /boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory

Thanks for the help.

Reply to InlandTaipan

Booted up this morning and it told me that there we no hard drives available to boot from. Solution? Format and re-install. Of course, afterward I updated Linux and restarted.

Code :

fsck from util-linux-ng 2.16
init: udevtrigger main process (484) terminated with status 1
init: udevtrigger post-stop process (485) terminated with status 1
init: udevmonitor main process (481) killed by TERM signal
init: networking main process (488) terminated with status 1

And then hangs, doing nothing.

Reply to InlandTaipan

Sorry for the delayed reply, I have been very busy. All right, your initial problem looks like something has hosed the Linux bootloader's configuration. You need to have a configuration file at /boot/grub/menu.lst for the bootloader to find the hard drive and boot. The bootloader not finding a hard drive to boot from is exactly what you would expect. There is a way around that- calling up a command line from the bootloader and manually entering the kernel and initrd info, then making a /boot/grub/menu.lst config file that works. But, you reinstalled and reformatted and apparently fixed that problem.

Your new problems appear to be caused by an update, possibably an update to udev, causing some trouble. I haven't seen anything pop up on a quick search that suggests others are having the same trouble. I don't run Ubuntu, so I haven't experienced any similar issues either. What version of Ubuntu are you running, by the way?

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Workstation: Under renovation. Opteron 6234, Supermicro H8QGL, 4x4 GB Corsair 1600C9
File server: 2x Xeon 5260, MSi MS-91A1, 2x2 GB PC2-5300R FB-DIMMS
HTPC: 2x Xeon LV 2.00 Sossaman, TYAN i7520SD, 6 B PC2-3200R
Reply to MU_Engineer

I'm running 9.10.
A buddy of mine told me that I need to chroot the update files from the liveCD and re-update here, or something along those lines. so I'm gonna do that and see what happens. It most likely was a borked update. Thanks for the help.

Reply to InlandTaipan

MU_Engineer wrote :

Sorry for the delayed reply, I have been very busy. All right, your initial problem looks like something has hosed the Linux bootloader's configuration. You need to have a configuration file at /boot/grub/menu.lst for the bootloader to find the hard drive and boot. The bootloader not finding a hard drive to boot from is exactly what you would expect. There is a way around that- calling up a command line from the bootloader and manually entering the kernel and initrd info, then making a /boot/grub/menu.lst config file that works. But, you reinstalled and reformatted and apparently fixed that problem.

Your new problems appear to be caused by an update, possibably an update to udev, causing some trouble. I haven't seen anything pop up on a quick search that suggests others are having the same trouble. I don't run Ubuntu, so I haven't experienced any similar issues either. What version of Ubuntu are you running, by the way?

Fixed it. Thanks for the help.

Reply to InlandTaipan

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This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey

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Forum Linux/Free BSD : General Discussion [Solved] Alright, I seriously screwed up big time.

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