I decided to dual setup my desktop also. Install and dual boot, no problem. Installed updates, no problem, no error msg. But on reboot, grub was not visible, and it autobooted into 12.04. works fine. But I figured out that grub was there but not visible, so next reboot, used the keys to cursor down to bottom, and hit enter. Booted into XP, no problem. OK grub is the only problem, caused by the updates. So, lets revert to last known state.
So, I re-installed, from the ISO CD, 12.04 over the top of the working 12.04 partition. Install was fine, no errors.
But, on reboot, grub went straight in to grub rescue> mode. And that's where we are now. I didn't touch it further.
Question. Is it more prudent to try to recover the MBR from the XP side, as I had built an XP recovery disk. Or will that method not overwrite, or precede, the erroneous grub code.
Or is it safe enough for me,to try to recover the grub file in this 'blind' grub environment. If that goes wrong, can I still recover the XP MBR record with confidence.
MOST IMPORTANT. The desktop bios does NOT support USB boot.
