Grub misses windows

[Peter Witteveen]

Dear people of the mint community,

I am using linux mint for a year now and I really appreciate it.
My desktop still had version 2.1, so i thought it was time to upgrade to Mint 5. (fresh install).

WD 250 GB:

containing linux mint 2.1 and winXP (for games)

This disk contains data as well

WD 80 GB:

New disk for linux mint 5.

MAXTOR 80 GB:

Extra storage and old data.

I installed mint 5, and rebooted. Grub wasn't able to boot ANYTHING, not even mint 5. (everything was on the grub list, even windows), grub said he could not find the partitions.

I reinstalled mint 5, and now i can boot mint 5 and mint 2.1 with grub, but WinXP is not present on the grub list. (it was there before...)

ALL the data is intact, windows is still on the disk, it just doesn't appear on grub.

I have never had these kind of problems before using linux mint.

Can someone help me with this?

Is there a way to fix grub?

I do not feel like reinstalling mint 5 again, because the installer has been acting strange all of the time. (freezing, randomness, stuff like that, it nearly formatted my 250 GB disk!)

thanks in advance!

[Peter Witteveen]

I tried to reinstall grub using the following commands:

Code: Select all
sudo grub

This will drop you into a grub prompt. Run these two commands one at a time.

Code: Select all
root (hd0,0)

Code: Select all
setup (hd0)

I got this:

grub> root (hd0,0)
Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xc

grub> setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

Error 15: File not found

grub>

I get this error in both 2.1 and linux mint 5...

[Nessa]

Peter, how is your 250GB drive partitioned? Just Mint 2.1 on the first and XP on the second? Are the both Mint installation still able to boot up?