Question 2. Probably not. No way to tell, but if it is failing you'll see some strange behaviour in Windows as well. Corruption of Wubi installs is fairly common, since they seem more vulnerable than normal Ubuntu installs, and this can be triggered by a crash (also not uncommon) that leads to the corruption. If you have ever forced a reboot, then look no further. This is a well-established cause of Wubi corruption. (Always use Alt+SysRq R-E-I-S-U-B to safely reboot)
Question 1.
In general, the steps to follow are:
1. Run chkdsk /r in Windows. This will repair the Windows partition that holds the Wubi \ubuntu\disks\root.disk
.
2. If necessary, fsck
the root.disk from an Ubuntu live DVD.
However, step 1 is not without risk. It's possible that it doesn't repair the disk and you end up with a 0 byte disk that is a dead-end.
For this reason, if you really cannot afford to lose your data, you might consider running photorec
on the root.disk
or booting a live DVD and mounting it read-only to back up data before attempting the repair.
Here are some links to assist with the above:
How can I recover files inside a Wubi install before re-installing Ubuntu?
How to recover Ubuntu data if it's installed inside Windows?
To run photorec, you'd boot a live DVD and then run photorec on the root.disk, sort of like this, but instead of /dev/loop0
you'd use the /<path to>/root.disk
Just remember which methods are destructive (chkdsk
, fsck
) and which are not. Attempting to mount and copy or running photorec
are not. BUT if the root.disk is already badly corrupted you may not have a choice.
Once you have your data, I'd recommend a normal install, or if you choose to reinstall with Wubi, keep your important stuff synched off the root.disk
e.g. to /host/xxx (natively on the Windows host partition).