Problem with Ubuntu 6.06 and S96J

Ok, I've seen other people with this problem in other linux forums but I haven't seen a satisfactory response yet. hopefully some of you laptop people can help me out more.

I have an Asus s96j with a SATA hard drive. I installed XP pro first before I decided to put linux on it. XP worked fine for about a month, I never had any major problems. I got partition magic and created a partition for linux, which worked fine. I put in the Ubuntu 6.06 live cd and tried to install. Again, it seemed fine during the install. It detected the partition I made, and it created more partitions easily enough.

Now when I restarted and tried to boot in Ubuntu, when it gets to "mounting root file systems" it waits a long time and says "sda2 (my root partition) not found". I went back into the live cd and checked the partitions, and everything looked fine. I created the partitions again, and reinstalled Ubuntu. Problem remained. Problem #1.

So then I tried to boot using windows. No good. It got through the windows loading screen, then came up with 2 files that were missing, then went to a BSOD and died. It continues to do this. I tried the XP Pro disc, but attempts at restoration failed (including replacing the kernel and searching for the missing files) and reinstalling windows on my original partition failed because it said it did not detect that partition as having a proper windows filesystem. Problem #2. Now this isn't really a linux related problem, since it is almost certainly related to partition magic, but it's all part of the process of installing linux on a laptop so I feel it's relevent.

I've worked on this and talked to many people about this. The best explanation I've seen is that linux is having trouble with my SATA drive. Here is a thread about the same problem http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=218329 and I have hope that it's just an Ubuntu bug. I have some files in XP that I would like to salvage (I didn't backup my files, something I will never fail to do again) and since I can't seem to be able to restore windows to bootable condition, I'll need to do so through linux. So it's important to get some sort of linux working on my computer. The ubuntu 6.06 live cd cannot mount my windows partition, so I can't use that. I do have a Fedora Core 5 cd set, as well as the latest Red Hat. I also have an old Slackware 3.5 cd that can be utilized.

Any suggestions, people? Anyone have similar problems? Help is greatly appreciated.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60515

SaferSephiroth experienced the same bug with his S96J.

As for recovering your Windows files, that's tough. If you have a desktop machine that's SATA capable, you could purchase a notebook hard disk drive to desktop hdd converter and hook it up, boot up. Or, if you can get the LiveCD running and a usb key, you can move your files piece-by-piece to another computer, or if you have a server, you can upload them to the server.

Once you've gotten your files offloaded, it's time to wipe the hard disk. Boot up with the Windows CD. Choose to manually partition the disk. Delete all partitions on the disk. Create a partition for Windows XP in NTFS format. Select that partition to install Windows XP.

 

You are not in trouble yet. I went through the same thing when I made mine a dual boot. What has happen is that the mbr table was changed by Ubuntu when you told it to. Did you by chance made the PartitionMagic recovery disk? If you did it is very easy. If you boot using the PM cd there is a utility to repair the MBR. If not I assume you put Ubuntu at the end of the NTSF partation. XP has a utility called "System Recovery" below are the instructions. This worked for me. There are also some unix utility on Knoppix Live Cd and The Ultimate Boot CD is easier to use.

The next time do not allow Ubuntu to modify the MBR, option to select is Leave as is. All unix flavors have a generic loader that they use. If you had created the PM recovery it would had take a whole 10 sec after the floppy boot.

I made a small dos partition (100meg) at the start of my HD for the boot manager and any other utilities I may need.

 

You can also use a Windows XP install disc and boot from that. Go to console (don't try a repair install!!!!!!) and then run "fdisk /mbr". That will reinstall the MBR for Windows and hopefully fix it. You should also be able to run chkdsk.exe from that disc, in case you have actual data corruption instead of just the boot record. Hope it all works out for you.

 

Thanks a lot for the replies. I'll try repairing the MBR for windows.

Also, I tried installing Fedora Core and that worked out fine, so I do have an actual OS now. However it also has problems mounting my windows filesystem. Hopefully once the MBR is replaced that'll be fixed too.

 

If you replace the MBR you'll nuke your Fedora Core install. The MBR takes care of ALL operating systems (It's the Master Boot Record). Try a chkdsk from the repair prompt (I think you can chkdsk.exe d: or whatnot, depending on how your partitions are set up)

 

Will chkdsk repair the MBR? I thought you said it would just check for corrupted data.

I'm not averse to nuking my fedora install in order to repair windows, as long as I'll be able to reinstall it (or Ubuntu) afterwards. I have to keep in mind that my ultimate goal is to run windows and linux correctly, as well as hopefully saving my windows files. It doesn't matter as much if I have to reinstall linux to save windows, or save my windows files through linux and then reinstall windows. As long as the job gets done.

 

Nope. chkdsk checks the integrity of your filesystem, which is inside a partition. The MBR basically tells your computer how to boot. It's just a little bit of code that tells the computer "Start reading data and executing HERE" essentially.
If Windows starts but bluescreens, try these steps in order:
1) Start Windows, and start mashing F8 as soon as you can, get into safe mode. If you can start up there, you have a driver issue.
2) If you can't do that, boot from a WinXP disc and start the recovery console, and then run chkdsk.exe /F /R c: ( or d: or whatever drive your Windows drive is now. Probably the first partition, thus c: ) Try booting Windows after this finishes (reboot with the disc not in the drive)
3) If neither of the above help, or you can't get it to boot into Windows, boot into the Recovery Console (like above) and then run "fdisk /mbr". That will overwrite the master boot record to a Windows XP compatible one and point it to the first partition, where XP should theoretically be. Hopefully it boots then.

If none of this works for you, then you need to basically decide whether to take the machine to a specialist, or if you can live without the data. You should double-check to make sure there's no way to mount the Windows partition under Linux though, and copy the data over the network. If Linux won't mount it, you might be SOL. Since fedora is booting, try these steps to mount it:

Make yourself root. Not sure if fedora goes the sudo root, or su. Just figure out how.
mkdir mountpoint
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1/ mountpoint/

If it dumps you back to a prompt without an error, it's mounted. ls mountpoint, and start looking through your files.

If not, your system may be totally hosed. Sorry Best I can give you right now.

 

I can't mount it under Fedora.

chkdsk came back saying it detected one or more errors on the disk. Crap. Hopefully nothing really critical but it might be the problem.

I'll run the fdisk /mbr. If it kills Fedora I'll reinstall it or Ubuntu. If this doesn't work I might as well give up on my data.

 

WAIT! Did you do chkdsk /F /R C: ? That should repair it if it can, not just tell you there's an error...

 

chkdsk did not work. I had to wipe it all. So now I've got windows back, operational. I installed Ubuntu first, but it's still not detecting the SATA hd, though I heard there are drivers that will let Ubuntu detect SATA so I'm willing to try that. Since I installed Ubuntu and then windows, the grub that came with ubuntu is now gone, and as such I can't really boot it at the moment. PartitionMagic came with a boot loader called Boot Magic. Anyone know if this is any good, or if there are any other alternatives?

 

Dang. Sorry man. You generally want to install Windows first because of that very issue, Windows overwrites the MBR with it's own version instead of GRUB. It's very interesting that Ubuntu won't detect your SATA hard drive. There must be a strange SATA controller in it, because I've had better luck with SATA and Linux than with Windows.
I don't know anything about Boot Magic offhand, unfortunately. You've already reinstalled Windows, not much you'll lose by trying it out.
Last check... you are installing Ubuntu 6.06, right? Not the older 5.10 version from an old CD or something? There have been a lot of hardware support changes in the later version here. But even 5.10 runs my 4-disk SATA RAID array out of the box.

 

Yes, 6.06. A friend told e to reinstall Ubuntu, and that I should have installed windows first. I'm going to try the alternate install CD, rather than installing off the live cd, to see if that makes any difference.

Thanks for the help though, everyone.

 

No problem. If you have a specific question, feel free to send me a pm or reply to this thread.

 

Sorry to chime in late (too late?) but I might have the solution for you.

I managed to nuke my Windows partition from Ubuntu (my own **** fault - installed grub on top of it ... that'll teach me to mess with boot records).

I fixed it by using the most excellent testdisk utility from http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk. Make sure you download the latest version off the site rather than using any version that comes with your distro as the latest version has more features.

Testdisk detected that the first few sectors of my Windows partition were wrong, and restored them from the backup Windows makes automatically. This made me able to read all the files from my Windows partition and recover data, but didn't allow me to boot Windows yet.

Then I booted from the Windows XP install disk. At the appropriate time press 'R' for a recovery console (don't press F2 for automatic recovery). In the console:

Code:

fixboot c:

And all done... it works!

The Windows recovery console has two useful utilities: fixmbr and fixboot. fixmbr restores the default Windows MBR data and fixboot restores the boot record for an individual Windows partition. Depending on which one of these you have nuked you can use either of those commands.

 

fixmbr does the same thing as fdisk /mbr It restores the default Windows MBR. It should boot into Windows then as well, if your partitions are "standard", ie Windows installed to the first partition.