Gutsy Install Does Not Detect Windows XP for Dual Boot

I can confirm that I've installed through the LiveCD, and it also did not detect XP installed (no chainloader entry for xp in menu.lst).

I had the same problem and had to manually enter text into the menu.1st file so XP would show up. This only happened with the Alt CD and not the Desktop CD.

I will confirm this behavior. Disk subsystem is all S-ATA.

It happened to me on my desktop with live cd. No option to boot to windows, went straight to ubuntu. Using gutsy beta by the way.

Please describe your disk layout and post the output of sudo fdisk -l ( that's lower case L ).

I have my disks divided into several partitions. Following is the output of the above command.

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 24321 195358401 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1 914 7341642 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 915 10052 73400953+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 10053 24321 114615711 83 Linux

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

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1958 15727603+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 1959 3782 14651280 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 3783 30401 213817117+ 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 3783 5606 14651248+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 5607 5849 1951866 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 5850 30401 197213908+ 83 Linux

hda1 is where Windows XP is located, and hda2 is where Ubuntu is located (hda5 is /home). Except for the swap partition, all other partitions are storage.

Similar here but Tribe 5 Kubuntu Alternate CD and W2K not in Grub
This was when Tribe 5 was first released

Tribe 4 was OK and found W2K
(Tribe 5 was a clean install as I deleted Tribe 4 and used the same partition)

Both 4 & 5 picked up Feisty on another partition

Haven't used Gutsy Beta yet
I did post on ubuntuforums at the time but nobody else confirmed the problem
I couldn't find anything on launchpad too so did not report this then

Same problem here. There's just one SATA-disk in my system, and I installed Windows XP first and then Gutsy beta (Daily, October 4). Here's what sudo fdisk -l gives:

Levy /dev/sda: 250.0 Gt, 250059350016 tavua
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = sylinterit of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00038785

    Laite Käynn Alku Loppu Lohkot Id Järjestelmä
/dev/sda1 * 1 3825 30724281 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3826 4074 2000092+ 82 Linux / Solaris heittovaihtotiedosto
/dev/sda3 4075 6627 20506972+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 6628 30401 190964655 5 Laajennettu
/dev/sda5 6628 30401 190964623+ 83 Linux

Although Grub doesn't notice the Windows installation, my desktop has an icon "sda1", which lets me access the Windows partition.

Same problem, but Windows is Vista.

I tried both text and graphical installers from Gutsy DVD (2007.10.06).
After installation GRUB menu contains only Ubuntu, Ubuntu recovery and memtest items.

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e2194

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 13426 107844313+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 13427 19196 46347525 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 19197 19457 2096482+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Can confirm it! Have Vista on /dev/sda1

Disk /dev/sda: 122.9 GB, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14946 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0009dfc4

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1961 15746048 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 1961 14946 104306234 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 1961 13457 92345841 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 13458 13469 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 13470 13531 497983+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 13532 14946 11365956 83 Linux

Same problem, my XP partition was not recognized during install of the release candidate and grub did not create an entry for it. Additionally every time a kernel update is received it wipes out my manually added grub entry for XP.

It came to my mind to add a few things of my system:

Motherboard: Asus A8N-Sli Deluxe, Nforce 4
Two SATA disks: Western Digital WD2500AAKS and Samsung SV1203N DVD writer
Gutsy version: 64-bit

I wonder there is a common factor with other reporters.

I just re-installed Windows and Ubuntu (Gutsy daily October 11), and now Grub was set up properly and both OS'es were present in the menu.

I also tried installing Gutsy again using the Release Candidate LiveCD. It worked perfectly and GRUB is set up with both Ubuntu and Windows as choices. Looks like the problem is fixed. :-)

why dont the alternate text installation let the user choose where to install grub, not by detecting windows xp
thats what it does in the live cd installation gui

I have a ntfs partition on hd(0,0) with no xp/os , i only want to use its ntldr + grldr to boot.
and i want to install ubuntu on hd(0,1) mount as / , hd(0,2) mount as swap
/dev/sda
 /dev/sda1　|　ntfs　|　boot
 /dev/sda2　|　ext3　|　mount as /
 /dev/sda3　|　swap　|　mount as swap
which is affected by this problem

Any one knows that if there is such a program that can detect all the systems you have in your disk and create a menu.lst for you automatically? something like this:

root@ideer:/boot# grub-detect
/dev/sda1 ... Windows XP found
/dev/sda2 ... Ubuntu 8.04 found
/dev/sda5 ... no
/dev/sda6 ... Debian 4.0 Etch found
/dev/sda7 ... FreeBSD 7 found
ok
menu.lst.auto created
root@ideer:/boot#