Problems after installing Ubuntu 10.10 on Windows Vista

Question

I just got done installing Ubuntu 10.10 on my Windows Vista as a separate partition and now my Vista won't boot (in fact I am not seeing an option to choose another OS, every time it defaults to Ubuntu)

I really don't want to lose all my data on Vista. How do I get my Vista back?

Steps I took:

• From Windows, Disk management, I create a 30 GB partition.
• Booted Ubuntu using USB and then picked this newly create partition for install.
• picked mount point as "/"
• Also checked the Format option while installing.

Answer 1

If you hold down the left shift key during an Ubuntu boot, it brings up the GRUB boot-loader menu. I don't know, but maybe the Vista partition is listed as a bootable partition in GRUB.

Answer 2

why don't you try the update-grub command in ubuntu?? i am not sure it will work , but worth a try

Answer 3

I just "recovered" from a similar event. I discovered after several hours of searching that when I installed 10.10 it had not used the created partition but had instead wiped out all partitions and installed itself over the whole drive. Needless to say I lost everything on my other two partitions :Windows Vista and Ubuntu 10.04: I am just glad I did not have any life or death information on either system, but it was still a pain. I hope this is not what happened to you. Good luck...

Answer 4

Vista doesn't seem to like it when you resize its partition. Windows XP and 7 don't mind. The easiest way is to boot using a Vista rescue CD and get to rebuild your boot files (I don't remember details as I no longer have a Windows machine). After you fix Vista, you may need to boot with a live CD or USB to fix your Linux boot.