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I have a Dell Inspiron 1525, on which I had previously had a dual-boot Ubuntu 9.10 / Windows Vista set-up (plus some other nonsense that came factor-installed).

There are some similar questions to this, but none have been an answer to my dilemma. I just upgraded from Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 (I know, it took me a while). I tried to restart and boot into Windows Vista so I can watch Netflix (which of course isn't compatible with Linux), and Windows Vista is no longer an option in my boot menu.

I tried running sudo update-grub, and this is what I got:

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-30-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-30-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-23-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-23-generic
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found Microsoft Windows XP Embedded on /dev/sda1
Found Windows Recovery Environment (loader) on /dev/sda3
Found Microsoft Windows XP Embedded on /dev/sda5
done

One of those lines should be Windows Vista. Curious, I tried GParted, and it shows one 111.79 GB "unallocated" partion on /dev/sda. Needless to say, this is not actually the case.

Did upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04 break my system? How can I regain access to Windows XP? Thanks for any help....

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Looks to me like grub wrote over the Windows boot manager. Can you select Windows XP from the grub menu at startup? – MaxMackie Apr 3 '11 at 0:46

1 Answer

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My laptop with Ubuntu 9.04 and 10 did the same thing in one upgrade. They just screwed up and mislabeled Vista as "Recovery environment." Give it a try and it will boot fine!

If you wanna rename it, you'll have to look around in your /boot subfolder for menu.lst from Ubuntu. Then, use a more precise name and be careful not to change anything other than the title.

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Thank you, that did it! Still not sure why GParted is showing no partitions, though. – eaarthman Apr 3 '11 at 3:33
Glad to help! GParted said "unallocated" for your whole disk, not even for one of its partitions like sda1 or sda2; just gnore it. Partitions sometimes confuse tools randomly, and I try to use a different one if changes must be applied. In case you reinstall Windows or testdrive lots of distributions without a Virtual PC, it's good caution to burn a copy of SuperGrubDisk's ISO (open source). It saved me once when Vista's rescue ate grub's loader for lunch. You can get it here: supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Howto_Fix_Grub – Vlueboy Apr 3 '11 at 5:23

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