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I've been running Windows XP on a desktop machine (C:/) and installed Ubuntu 12.04 (D:/) and Windows bootloader was able to recognize Ubuntu when I turn on the computer.

Months later, I've formatted drive C:/, removed XP, and then installed Windows 7 but sadly, Ubuntu is not showing in the boot menu as it used to be presented:

Windows 7

Ubuntu

How to get it back on boot list?

NOTE: Please note that installing Ubuntu was done from inside Windows XP with wubi.exe

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Wubi installs places all of Ubuntu in c:\ubuntu\disks\root.disk. However, You stated that Ubuntu was installed in D:\ . When you boot Windows 7, can you locate the root.disk file in D:\ ? Please answer by editing the original question. – user68186 Aug 23 '12 at 20:54
actually no because installation was done on a different drive that the one containing Windows. I have on my d drive D:\ubuntu\disks\root.disk – Muhammad Badi Aug 23 '12 at 21:29

2 Answers

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I am no expert on wubi but your best bet may be to install Ubuntu again. You may want to go for installing Ubuntu alongside Windows 7 it its own sets of partitions.

If you have files under previous Ubuntu installation inside the root.disk, you can copy them to the new /home after mounting the root.disk using these instructions: Can I mount a Wubi .disk image in a new Wubi installation?.

Another approach (This is untested. It may not work and you may lose all the data.) is to:

  • make a copy of root.disk and keep it in another location
  • Install Ubuntu using wubi again from Windows 7
  • Reboot to make sure the new wubi installation works
  • Reboot back to windows and replace the new root.disk with the copy of the old root.disk with existing data
  • Reboot and verify the wubi installation works with the old wubi

If the old root.disk does not work under the new wubi installation:

  • Reboot to Windows 7, switch back to the new root.disk
  • Reboot to Ubuntu, mount the old root.disk and copy the data files to the new installation.

First, wubi installations are problematic as root.disk files can get corrupted. Second, I have no idea what happens if you copy or move the root.disk files while booted to Windows, in terms of the ability of booting back to Ubuntu under wubi installation. Use extreme caution, if you want to try this. You may lose all the data in the Ubuntu wubi installation.

Hope this helps

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up vote -1 down vote

If unsure do a complete raw reformat with a program Killdisk from the ultimate boot Cd - current version available 5.1.1.

www,Ultimatebootcd.com

www.ubcd4win.com

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It would help to explain what to do with these links. With that said, the OP is trying to get access to their existing Wubi installation and so reformatting should not be done in this case. – ObsessiveSSOℲ Sep 18 '12 at 6:27

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