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Platform: AMD Athlon64 3200+ running Windows XP. With your help I managed to download Ubuntu to a memory stick and run it from that. I liked it and decided to install it alongside XP, so started installation. Installation completed and asked to reboot.

Machine failed to shut down, so after ten mins or so I shut it down manually and brought it back up again. It came up with a black screen and the fan in high speed. Tried rebooting with Ubuntu memory stick inserted but same thing. Tried rebooting with Windows recovery disc but same thing.

Have I lost my PC?

Ninad
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Andy Kay
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  • Hi @AndyKay, it would help to know what are the exact steps you followed during installation process, whether you received any warnings / errors in the process. What is exact text you currently see on screen when you boot? Please go ahead and update your question for Community members to help you better. – Ninad Nov 23 '13 at 06:42
  • Update: Not completely screwed. When it locked up in the manner described above, I switched off at the mains and gave up. Now I come to turn it on again it loads up as Ubuntu from the disk. Phew! But since Ubuntu is supposed to be running alongside Windows, how do I get it to boot up as Windows? (Forgot to backup some stuff.) – Andy Kay Nov 23 '13 at 08:30

1 Answers1

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You should select Install Ubuntu alongside other systems (Windows in your case) when presented with Preparing to installation dialogue box during Ubuntu installation. - If you have chosen this option during install, give a try to boot-repair tool to fix your Grub entries.

If you have selected erase disk and install Ubuntu instead, I am afraid you may have lost your Windows installation already, with only Ubuntu present on your PC now.

Refer to this answer to get more information.

Since you say that you have selected Install Ubuntu alongside other systems, looks like you may be facing the RAID problem as mentioned here. I am outlining their solution to this problem here too -

Ubuntu seems to have marked one or more of your partitions as RAID.

  1. To fix it first turn off RAID in your bios.
  2. Then load up Ubuntu from liveDVD / liveUSB and open gparted. If you get a drive with a funny name like nvidia_ahahdhjdfsjkf then you have mounted a RAID drive that you don't want.

  3. To get rid of it, Open a terminal and run:

    $ sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/name_of_your_disk

    • Note : you want the disk name not the partition name. You can see your disk names in gparted. e.g. if disk names are sda and sdb and partition names are sda1, sda5 and sdb1, then you have to do both sda and sdb.

  4. Restart gparted. Once you have erased the RAID meta data you should see the funny named disk disappear.

  5. Once you have verified the RAID disk is gone reboot and your Windows OS should boot.

Source : Ubuntu Forums - Ubuntu has forced sda into a RAID

Community
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Ninad
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  • Thank you. I did take the "install alongside" option, so should be okay on that score. Following your advice I proceeded as instructed for boot-repair installation: powered-up from USB, typed relevant command lines into new terminal, allowed to complete ('done'), but now when I type in 'boot-repair' on a new terminal it tells me 'command not found'. The other ways to run boot-repair suggested on that page are a complete enigma to me. Thanks for any advice. – Andy Kay Nov 23 '13 at 10:47
  • Okay so I sometimes take instructions too literally and come a cropper. I found another site that presented the same instructions differently and managed to download boot-repair and use it. System still boots straight into Ubuntu. I don't know how the choice of operating system should be presented on startup, so I don't know what to look for. I'll keep trying things but if you have any further suggestions then they would be appreciated. Failing that I'll post another question in a few days time. – Andy Kay Nov 23 '13 at 14:03
  • Heh... out of range error was hiding GRUB. I found a relevant post on this forum that gave me instructions to fix this and now I can make a choice. However... when I try to boot into XP I get error message "\system32\ntoskrnl.exe missing or corrupt". I wonder if this is a sign of something serious, and if not then how I should go about re-installing the file. – Andy Kay Nov 23 '13 at 14:42
  • I have updated answer. Please let me know how it goes. – Ninad Nov 23 '13 at 18:08
  • I'm burned out ninad. I'm a beginner at this and I've spent waaaay too long on it already. But my machine isn't screwed, I like Ubuntu, and I don't really need Windows. If I ever decide that I'd like to access my XP again then I'll look into it at that point. Thanks for all your help. Andy. – Andy Kay Nov 24 '13 at 07:00
  • Sure @Andy. If you ever decide to look again into it, you may try out this question and its answers if they are applicable to you. – Ninad Nov 24 '13 at 07:37