Installed Kubuntu 8.10 onto Vista HDD but now cant boot into VISTA

[inquiring]

I installed 8.10 kubuntu onto a 160gb HDD Toshiba laptop which was sold with VISTA PREMIUM, 80 gb of which was Windows Vista Premium after Kubuntu partitioned the drive . Kubuntu works fine in all apps and aspects but I am now unable to boot into VISTA as that OS is not "present" and the partition table needs to be fixed or repaired.

How can I restore/recover/repair VISTA so that I can dual boot in to either Kubuntu or VISTA?. Is there an application that will help me perform this or are there some admin commands to follow that will allow me to select which OS to boot into-and do so successfully?

Thank you wizards and experts.

[Snowhog]

Hmm. I'll make the assumption that you didn't wipe out Vista completely. Open a console ( K Menu > Applications > System > Terminal) and type:

sudo fdisk -l
(that's a lower case L)

Copy/paste the output in your reply. This will tell us what partitions (and the filesystem types) that are on your HD.

[Iskan Der]

There is a chance that everything is OK with partitions. Ubuntu just did not add Vista to the GRUB's menu. Locate /boot/grub/menu.lst file and look in it. If there is nothing about Vista or Windows inside, add the following lines to the end of the file (use "sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst" command and consider making a backup of the file):

title Windows Vista
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
Here "(hd0,0)" is a Vista partition. If Vista is installed on a second partition, it should be "(hd0,1)".

[Qqmike]

I think I'd first try what Iskan Der says.
If that gives you some weird error message upon selecting Vista, then try it again with this line:

Instead of
root (hd0,0)
Try this:
rootnoverify (hd0,0)

And it may be (hd0,1) instead of (hd0,0), as Iskan Der says.
The output of Snowhog's command would tell the story, if needed.

Just be patient -- assuming you didn't wipe Vista out, this is fixable.


This is a standard Vista dual boot reference. Been awhile since I read it, but I recall it deals with using Vista to repair the booting (not sure, though if it addresses GRUB fixes):
Vista *** The definitive dual-booting guide: Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step
http://apcmag.com/dualboot