Libre Things

A friend of mine has a PC with Windows XP / Ubuntu in dual boot. After the Lucid upgrade, Windox fails to boot (strange lines on the screen after Grub…).

TestDisk saved us:

sudo aptitude install testdisk
sudo testdisk

1. Choose [ Create ] Create a new log file
2. Choose windows physical disk, then [Proceed ]
3. Choose [ Continue ] Continue even if there are hidden data
4. Choose [Intel ] Intel/PC partition
5. [ Advanced ] Filesystem Utils
6. On Windows XP partition, boot sector is generally bad or non identical to backup sector (Sectors are not identical.).
7. Choose [ Backup BS ] to copy the backup sector to the master sector.
8. After that, quit, reboot and test.

Sources:

• http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step#NTFS_Boot_sector_recovery
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9263959