Lost data transitioning from WINXP to Mint-Ubuntu

[marzjm@htcplus.net]

Dear Forum,

In my frustration to transition from Win XP to Linux, I did not transfer/save any data and I chose the automatic installation selection.
Is there any way to retrieve the info fom Windows XP. Could I uninstall Linux, recover stuff from XP and then come back to Linux >>

Please advise.

[Acid_1]

O think the auto does all the free space, but if it didn't, and you wiped it all, then your outta luck, or you can send it in to someone to have them recover lost data.... I don't know how much that costs.

[Lolo Uila]

Automatic should have just shrunk the XP partition to make room for Mint. XP should still be there.

Do you not have an XP option at the grub boot menu?

Run Gparted (Partition Editor) and see what your drive looks like. If you see a Linux Partition, and a Windows (NTFS/FAT32) partition, then XP is still there. If you are not getting an XP option at boot time, then you can add one by editing the /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

[marzjm@htcplus.net]

Lolo Uila

Thanks for the guidance.
Where can I find the /boot/grub/menu.1st file ?

I saw that there was fat16 and fat 32 file under feature in Gparted.
Any further help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Lolo Uila]

To edit the menu.lst file (and that's a lower case "L" after the period) open a terminal and type:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

and enter your login password when asked.

"gedit" is the default editor for Gnome. If you are running XFCE it would be "mousepad" and, umm... I can't recall the default editor for KDE at the moment (it's almost 3:00AM here and I'm tired). Anyway... once you have the file open in the editor you can add an entry for your Windows boot.

I suggest you do some web searching and reading on editing the menu.lst file, but basically you'll want to add something like this:

Code: Select all

title		Windows XP Pro
root		(hd0,0)
chainloader	+1

to the end of the file after the part that says "### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST". Note that the "root (hd0,0)" represents the number of the boot drive "(hd0" and boot partition ",0)" -1 (don't forget to subtract one, it's important). So if Windows is on your 1st hard drive and 1st partition then 0,0 is correct. If windows is your 2nd drive and 1st partition it would be 1,0, etc.

If you want Windows to be your default boot (can't imagine why, but if you do) then look near the top of the file for the "default" setting, and set that to the number of the menu entry -1. So if there is only 1 Linux boot item, and 1 XP boot item and XP is the 2nd item, "default" for Linux would be 0, and XP would be 1. It's likely there are actually 3 Linux entries (normal, recovery & memtest) so putting XP at the end would actually make it the 4th entry, and the value of "default" would be set to 3 for XP (4-1).

If you'd like the grub boot menu to stay a little longer there is a value called "timeout" a little below the "default" entry. Set that to the number if seconds you want the menu to pause before booting your default choice. Of course you can also make it go away faster, or not show at all.

I'm really tired so I hope this is understandable. But just in case this hasn't confused you enough here's the end of my menu.lst file that triple boots Elyssa, Celena and XP on different partitions and drives (XP & Elyssa are sharing an Intel RAID array, and Celena is on another drive).

Elyssa is the 2nd partition of the 1st drive (the SATA RAID array)
Celena is the 1st partition of the 2nd drive (just a regular IDE drive)
XP is the 1st partition of the 1st drive (the SATA RAID array again)

Code: Select all

## ## End Default Options ##

title		Linux Mint Elyssa, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=/dev/mapper/isw_bdijicaebf_RAID_Volume2 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic

title		Linux Mint Elyssa, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=/dev/mapper/isw_bdijicaebf_RAID_Volume2 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic

title		Linux Mint Elyssa, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/mapper/isw_bdijicaebf_RAID_Volume2 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title		Linux Mint Elyssa, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/mapper/isw_bdijicaebf_RAID_Volume2 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title		Linux Mint, memtest86+ v1.70
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/boot/memtest86+.bin

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

title		Linux Mint Celena, kernel 2.6.20-17-generic
root		(hd1,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-17-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-17-generic
boot

title		Linux Mint Celena, kernel 2.6.20-17-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd1,0)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-17-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-17-generic
boot

title		Windows XP Pro (SP2)
root		(hd0,0)
chainloader	+1