Hello,
Been lurking around these forums for a little while and I have reallly appreciated all the help. I am dualbooting my system, Windows XP and Ubuntu 10.4. All was working quite well, when one day, I rebooted from within windows, and when I tried to come back in, Windows didn't work. In GPartEd, the windows Partition shows for Filesystem "unknown". I am wondering if it is just the MBR that is messed up or if I have bigger problems. Thankfully I had most of the data backedup, but I would like to recover it if possible. Any suggestions?
ukao 0 Newbie Poster
freshfitz 0 Posting Pro in Training
Not sure what gparted sees on a ntfs partition what is your mbr grub? What happens when you boot windows you get a black screen? Do you have another machine you can connect the HD to with a USB case?
thewebhostingdi -7 Junior Poster
Try to get live XP cd and boot your system from that CD. If your windows partition shows correctly then there is problem with your boot loader. If that CD can not access the windows partition then you have problem with your widows file system.
ukao 0 Newbie Poster
Hello,
Thanks for the replies.
@freshfitz what is your mbr grub?
Not sure what you are asking.
About attaching it to another computer, not very feasible. The harddrive is working as I am using ubuntu of off it, I just can't get to my windows.
@thewebhostingdi
I tried using a Windows XP Cd, but I could get it going. It would show boot from cd, and it never went all the way to the menu.
Thats what I am thinking that the Filesystem is somehow corrupted, not sure how to find that out or fix it. I was finding some tutorials online on fixing the mbr, but I never got far. How do I know if it is the mbr or if the whole filesystem is corrupted?
gerbil 216 Industrious Poster
When Windows fails to start do you get any error messages? What are they?
"what is your mbr grub?" - I don't know ubuntu... but Grub is their boot loader, somewhat similar in action to M$ boot.ini file but more comprehensive, in that it allows for other OSs...? a boot manager, in other words, differing in that it can run from the MBR and direct loading of the chosen OS from there..
I might be able to help you if you could install into another drive another Windows XP OS, a temporary one to use investigative/repair tools from. They probably exist for Ubuntu.... but there again, I just don't know linux.
happyrock 0 Light Poster
your Boot.ini file got borked...
I would try running chkdsk /r first....nojoy
then you could use the recovery console and repair the MBR and or fixboot...the problem doing that is it will screw up the dual boot that you have...you would have to edit the boot .ini file after you fixed it so windows would boot up to include the linux option
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