It’s a common thing. Especially when your dealing with computers. One thing happens, which causes another, which in turn, throws other stuff out of sync.
The effect is multiplied if you’re dual-booting Windows XP and Linux.
For the uninitiated, dual-booting is when you have multiple operating systems installed on your PC. You know you’re dual-booting if you have to select an OS when booting your PC. Anyway, back to my predicament. I assume you’ve read my previous post before reading this. If not, click here.
Well, I got Windows working fine on my PC. As I had predicted, I could not boot into Ubuntu. However, this was not a problem. Ubuntu comes with a Live CD. A Live CD is nothing but the operating system pre-installed on a CD, which you just need to pop-into your drive and boot your PC.
Note: Do refer to this post, if you can’t get your PC to boot from a CD.
Anyway, I used the Ubuntu Live CD to boot Ubuntu. I had read instructions to reinstall GRUB to the Master Boot Record. Anyway, I wanted to check the exact commands, so I tried connecting the Internet. Unfortunately, I had turned off DHCP on my ADSL modem. DHCP refers to Dynamic Host Control Protocol. It’s a feature on many modems and network routers, which automatically assigns IP addresses to PCs. IP refers to Internet Protocol. IP addresses are a series of digits in the form of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, which uniquely identifies a component in a network. Also, ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, which is a way to connect to the Internet using an existing phone line.
Ubuntu, by default, uses DHCP to connect to the Internet, and for some reason, my manual configuration wasn’t working. I fed in the IP address, gateway and DNS, manually, but it just wouldn’t connect. By the way, gateway and DNS are terms related to networks. A gateway is that IP address to which to send to data if it’s intended to go out of the internal network. For example, if I have a network consisting of me and my modem, then, my modem would be the gateway, because my PC will send information to the modem to send to the Internet. DNS stands for Doman Name Server. It’s actually something without which using the internet would be next to impossible. When you type ‘google.com’ into your browser address bar, the address is sent to the DNS, which looks up the IP address for that domain in its database.
Finally I did get connected. When I did, I found the page I was looking for – https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows. This website describes how to get GRUB up and working again, so that I could boot into Ubuntu. It required me to:
- Open the terminal. The terminal is similar to MS-DOS in Windows, although much more powerful. To be precise, similar to what MS-DOS was during the Windows 95-98 era.
- Run sudo grub. Here sudo has no relation to Sudoku, because that’s what popped up in my mind, when I first read about. Sudo causes the command to be run with the credentials of the root user. The root user is similar to the Administrator in Windows, and has the highest privileges in all Linux distributions.
- This command will open up the GRUB console. Type in find /boot/grub/stage1. The find command is used to locate which partition of a hard drive a particular file is located. By running this command, you get to know which partition GRUB files are located in. The output will typically by hda*.*, where * is replaced by a number, depending on what partition you install Linux.
- Then, set the root partition for GRUB by typing root (hd*.*). Use the same value obtained in the last step.
- Then type setup (hd0). This sets up GRUb in the Master Boot Record of the first hard disk of your PC.
- Type quit to save changes and quit.
- Now restart your PC. Windows and Linux should have ideally been automatically detected.
Not in my case.
Unfortunately, I could only boot into Windows. In the case of Linux, it gave me Error 17: Cannot mount partition or something like that. So, I booted using the Live CD again, and tried several permutations and combinations, till it finally worked. Apparently, while specifying the root partition, something had gone wrong. Installing Windows after formatting C: drive, seemed to have upset the partition numbering or something.
Not the end of my problems.
Something’s gone horribly wrong with Ubuntu. It boots up, but doesn’t show me the login screen. It boots into text-mode, showing me the terminal. And then the screen blink on and off 3 times, and then goes into safe graphics mode. It tells me that my graphics card and monitor can’t be detected and I have to set them myself, manually, which I do. Still, no change. I set the graphics driver to nVidia, and then reboot and the problem persists. Anyway, I managed to copy the Documents and Settings folder back to my C: drive.
Will post again about how I restored settings and how I fixed Ubuntu (if I do, that is…).