[SOLVED] help! no operating system found

just got a lenovo ideapad y530 that came with vista, and downloaded and ran ubuntu from the live cd. ran the guided partitioning -- left 110gb for ubuntu, 70gb for vista. installation semed to go fine, but upon restart, got the message

'no operating system found'

rebooted from the live cd and ran fdisk -l and got:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0xc3ffc3ff

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 9158 73561603+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 9159 28475 155163802+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/sda3 28476 30402 15471800 12 Compaq diagnostics Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary. /dev/sda5 24666 28475 30603793+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/sda6 9159 24030 119459277 83 Linux /dev/sda7 24031 24665 5100606 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 60.0 GB, 60022480896 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7297 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Disk identifier: 0x000dbae6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 * 1 7115 57151206 83 Linux /dev/sdb2 7116 7297 1461915 5 Extended /dev/sdb5 7116 7297 1461883+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

any ideas?

You might have to re-install GRUB (which helps manage the loading of the OS you wish to run)

One way is with the use of supergrub

You have linux partitions on both sda and sdb, so do you have different distros installed on each drive? Do you know which drive you are booting on start up? Also, I notice that your Vista partition is sda5, or a logical partition; was Vista installed to sda5, or did you move it there?

How about posting the following output:

sudo xxd  -l  2 -p /dev/sda
sudo xxd -s 1049 -l 2 -p /dev/sda
sudo xxd  -l  2 -p /dev/sdb
sudo xxd -s 1049 -l 2 -p /dev/sdb

Note that "-l" is a lowercase L, not a one. Also please post the output of:

sudo grub
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
grub> find /grub/stage1
grub> quit

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo xxd -l 2 -p /dev/sda 33c0 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo xxd -s 1049 -l 2 -p /dev/sda 0000 ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo xxd -l 2 -p /dev/sdb xxd: /dev/sdb: No such file or directory ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo xxd -s 1049 -l 2 -p /dev/sdb xxd: /dev/sdb: No such file or directory

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

Error 27: Unrecognized command

grub> grub> find /grub/stage1

I am suspecting what happened is that I loaded grub to the vista bootloader partition instead of its' own partition. Does this sound right, and how can I fix it?

OK, I believe I see the problem; your sda drive still has a Windows MBR, and yet your Linux partition is the one with the boot flag. That setup unfortunately won't work unless you install Grub to the boot sector of the linux partition. But the easiest way is to just install Grub to the MBR and let it handle the booting process, but please do those Grub commands again from my previous post, but do not include the "grub>" prompt when copying/pasting them. Also, what is on your linux partitions sda1, sda6, and sdb1?

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

Error 15: File not found

grub>

grub> find /grub/stage1

Error 15: File not found

I'm not sure how to find out what's on the partitions you asked for.

[IMG]http://file:///home/ubuntu/Desktop/gparted%20screenshot[/IMG]

hope this worked... tried to upload a screen shot of gparted to show the uses of my various partitions

trying one more time

I got frustrated and just completely wiped the drive, installed Ubuntu, and will lay Vista over it.

Oh well

should have done it the other way round if you wanted to keep windows,(i think) as you will have to reinstall grub as windows will over write the mbr.

Raz

Windows (to my understanding) does mess up the MBR, but I can go back and tell grub to take back over the MBR and include windows as a grub boot option. I tried to make it dual boot with easyBCD, but was completely unsucessful-- tried everything. So I went back and told grub that it was the bootloader and added windows as an option. In practice, this works very well for me.