Member Avatar for wafadz

Hello;

I tried to install Kubuntu 12 04, i have choosen the automatic installation; the latter is supposed to
install Kubuntu on the free part of the partition
At the end of the installation i had a message saying that the installation has crashed; and much worse
my windows partition was disabled, the installation was too fast; so i am sure that it was not formatted
but only disabled; can you help me to get back my data on windows partition.

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A quick, practical recovery plan (do this before trying repairs)

Stop using the PC or the affected disk. Every write (installs, repairs, or simply booting into another OS) reduces the chance of full recovery. Boot a Linux live USB ("Try" mode) or connect the drive to another machine and work from there. As noted, a very fast installer run can be a sign of a Wubi-style install (a virtual disk inside Windows); as suggested, the problem is often the boot layer rather than your personal files.

If you can still see the Windows volume in the live session, copy your personal data out first (Desktop, Documents, Users\<yourname>, etc.). Try the file manager first; if that fails, mount the partition read-only and copy files manually, for example:

sudo mkdir /mnt/win
sudo mount -o ro /dev/sdXN /mnt/win
# then copy to an external USB

If the partition looks damaged or cannot be mounted, create an image of the whole disk/partition to an external drive (use ddrescue) and work from the image — imaging preserves the drive and lets you attempt recovery without further risk.

If the partition table or NTFS metadata was altered, use TestDisk from the live session to search for and (if found) restore the old partition entry. Typical TestDisk workflow: launch it as root, choose the disk, run Analyse → Quick Search, review found partitions, and write the table only when you are confident.

If you actually used Wubi, your Linux filesystem may be inside a single file (root.disk) under the Windows volume (usually in ubuntu\disks). Mount that file read-only from the live session and extract files before attempting any repairs.

Once your data is safe, then attempt boot/repair tools or a reinstall. If any step feels risky, stop and consider a professional recovery service — it’s cheaper than losing irreplaceable data.

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Member Avatar for Ancient Dragon

Do you have a windows repair disk? Did you make backup before you started screwing up your computer?

Member Avatar for mike_2000_17

I see, from a post on another forum, that you used Wubi to carry out the installation. Personally, I never really trusted Wubi (and never recommend it), in part due to the fact that Windows is still underlying the virtual disk (which is kind of unreliable, as all Windows things are), and due to the large amount of warnings and cautionary disclaimers on their own official wiki.

Here are a few of the warnings that seem like they could be relevant to your particular case:

Warning

Wubi uses a virtual disk that is sensitive to forced shutdowns. If Ubuntu appears to be frozen please refer to: How to reboot cleanly even when the keyboard/mouse are frozen

Wubi does not work on any new PC with the Windows 8 logo or using UEFI firmware. Please use a 64-bit flavour of Ubuntu, installed directly to its own partition instead. For more information see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI
If you upgraded to Windows 8 and are using BIOS firmware, Wubi does work, but do not enable hybrid-sleep on Windows 8.

This seems like a very plausible problem that you have encountered.

Which Operating Systems are supported?

Windows 7, Vista, XP, and 2000 are known to work with Wubi.

That means, no Windows 8.

Installation error while formatting the swap file

If the installation fails while formatting the swap virtual disk it means that your drive is excessively fragmented. Uninstall, run jkdefrag on the target drive and then run Wubi again.

Did you de-frag before doing this?

Corrupted NTFS filesystem

All reported cases of damaged filesystems were from users who hard rebooted (pulling the plug).

When you hard reboot, there is always a chance of damaging your filesystem, whether you use Wubi or not.

New users, unfamiliar with a new operating system, tend to hard reboot more often than necessary when they encounter problems.

If Wubi becomes damaged as a result of a hard reboot, there is a chance that Windows may also become corrupted since the principle behind Wubi is that of a virtual disk within the host operating system.

Sometimes people blame Wubi for these issues even though a quick Google search will reveal numerous cases of NTFS corruption without users having ever installed Wubi or ntfs-3g (and a full software industry lurking on that…).

If the NTFS filesystem becomes corrupted you need to run chkdsk /r from the Windows Recovery Console on the Windows CD (or other recovery CD available on the web) or in the msdos console (if you can boot into Windows).

At the moment there is no fsck for NTFS on the Linux side, otherwise it would be possible to fix these errors automatically within Linux itself, without having to rely on Windows tools.

The best advice is to simply avoid hard rebooting, whatever OS you may be using.

In other words, you need to get a Windows repair / recovery disk of some kind and do a full file-system check and repair.

And, in the future: make backups first; and, don't use Wubi. If you want a Linux distro running under Windows, then use a VirtualBox. If you want a native dual-boot installation, then install through a LiveCD / LiveUSB on HDD space that you free up by shrinking some partitions under Windows first.

Member Avatar for wafadz

Hello Ancien Dragon
Infortunately i made a big mistake by not backing up my system before installing Kubuntu.

Mike-2000,
Thank you for your kind answer, will try it and get back to you.

Member Avatar for wafadz

Mike-2000

Am using Windows 7

Member Avatar for rubberman

Your Windows partition should still be ok, but the boot loader is fubar. You need to boot into the recovery image and then restore the Windows boot image:

The relevant commands are:

  1. bootrec /fixmbr
  2. bootrec /fixboot

Good luck!

Edited by rubberman
Member Avatar for wafadz

Hello rubberman, i tried your solution but it didn't work as if kubuntu disabled the windows partition, the problem is that i didn't backup the system

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