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boot repair output

installed 12.04 alongside XP, but no grub selection at boot, defaults to Ubuntu only. I've tried reinstalling several times. I can boot to XP by using boot repair and then can boot back to Ubuntu by using repair off of USB, but I've still not been able to create the boot option for both? What settings in boot repair should I use to achieve this? Or is there another way? Speak slowly as I am n00b.

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  • Have tried modifying GRUB bootloader?
    – Mitch
    May 24, 2012 at 7:55
  • No, but I would need instruction on how and what to change.
    – ghalalb
    May 24, 2012 at 7:56
  • I'm facing same issue, I've tried first and second answers of this post failed.
    – Mahesh.D
    Feb 16, 2013 at 12:52

4 Answers 4

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I would give Boot Repair a go which you can find details about here

Boot-Repair

This as they detail is

Boot-Repair is a simple tool to repair frequent boot issues you may encounter in Ubuntu like when you can't boot Ubuntu after installing Windows or another Linux distribution, or when you can't boot Windows after installing Ubuntu, or when GRUB is not displayed anymore, some upgrade breaks GRUB, etc.

As it looks as if your Ubuntu is at least working I would install it in Ubuntu using the following commands in a terminal (which may look tricksy but it is not really. Open a terminal up (ctrl-alt-t) and type in the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

The link above has a guide on how to use but basically it is as follows :

Using Boot-Repair

Recommended repair

launch Boot-Repair from either :
    the dash (Unity)

    System->Administration->Boot-Repair menu (Gnome)
    by typing 'boot-repair' in a terminal 
Then try "Recommended repair" button. When repair is finished, note the URL that appeared on a paper, then reboot and check if you recovered access to your OSs. 

Hope that helps

Let us know how you get on.

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  • thanks andybleaden. I've found the problem, and its so stupid I hope it makes you laugh. I can't "see" the GRUB screen because its out of range. So i need to figure out how to fix this. I stumbled on this while it was booting. Thought i'd arrow down to see what input it gave, and discovered I could boot into XP (I remembered that Windows would be last on the list). So now I need to set up GRUB screen res at boot to something that is recognised.
    – ghalalb
    May 25, 2012 at 10:59
  • well done!Glad you found a solution May 25, 2012 at 16:37
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Simple answer to your question. While your computer boots, hold the shift key and you should see the grub menu. :)

You may want to configure grub to stop this behavior, I recommend trying grub customizer. Here's a link with all the info you need on that: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1664134

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I would recommend that you use Super Grub Disk. You can Get it Here

I hope that will work for you.

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  • Thanks Mitch, gave that a try but it's just coming up with grub rescue, no menu.
    – ghalalb
    May 24, 2012 at 9:22
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As you have the "out of range" error, just use the "out of range" option of Boot-Repair (Boot-Repair -> Advanced options -> GRUB options -> out of range).

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