i just installed wubi and when i start it it goes to comand line how to i get to the regular operting system

What brand/model computer and what graphics card do you have?

Did you see the 'slideshow' during the installation?
Is the command line a proper login, or is it a grub prompt?

i have a nividia e- geforce 4mx-440 and i have a asus p4c800-e motherboard with an intel pentium 4 3.00ghz and yes i got the slide show at install and iam getting a grub prompt

Enter the following in the grub prompt: set
Tell me what the value is of the following variables: root prefix

then enter (lowercase LS): ls /boot/grub
What do you see?

Also what does this show: ls /boot/vmlinuz*

when i type in root prefix it dosnt do anything and when i type in the other two it tells me error unknow file system

when i type set in it tells me ?=18
color_highlight
color_normal
lang=
pager=
prefix=(memdisk)/boot/grub
root=loopo
show_panic_message=tre

and if i type in set root prefix it tells me not an assignment

Ok I didn't want you to set them.
Enter:
ls /boot/grub
ls /boot/vmlinuz*

Tell me what output each of those gives (lower case LS)

Then enter this:
search -s -f -n /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
echo $root

Tell me the output (should be (hd0,2) or something like that)

for the first 2 it says error: unknow file system
and for the 3 one it says error: no such device :/ubuntu
and for the 4 one it says loop0

for the first 2 it says error: unknow file system
and for the 3 one it says error: no such device :/ubuntu
and for the 4 one it says loop0

Did you install to your local drive or an external drive.
What version of Ubuntu are you installing and how did you install?
What version of Windows are you using?

i installed on local drive
and this is where i downloaded and install from i did just like it says to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/windows-installer and iam runing windows xp pro

I think there are a couple of possibilities:
1. you have software raid metadata on the drive (but you're not using a
raid) and that's confusing ubuntu.
2. you have some sort of encryption.
3. you have an excessively fragmented drive or one that's not clean (needs
chkdsk to clean it).

I've tested that link in the past day or so - for someone else having a
similar problem to you but who installed on an external drive. So I know it
works.

If your issue is #1 (you can tell if when you set up your computer it
prompted you whether you wanted to set it up using RAID) - then it's
possible to boot an ubuntu live CD and delete the raid metadata.

If you definitely don't have #1 or #2, try defragging - it won't hurt. After
that try chkdsk. That's all I've got right now.

Hi bcbc,

I think its better to continue instead oof UBuntu forms. I was checking these links.. running the commands as you suggested these are the following messages

ls /boot/grub
ls /boot/vmlinuz*

--- for these two commands nothing :(

search -s -f -n /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
Response: error : no such device: /ubuntu/disks/root.disk

echo $root
Response : memdisk

In addition, I am running ubuntu 11.04 on windows 7. After updating ubuntu, i started receiving this error. The ubuntu is installed on another partiion with windows.

to add when i run only ls, it gives

(memdisk) (hd0) (hd0,msdos3) (hd0,msdos2) (hd0,msdos1) (fd0)

Tushar Jain,
If you installed with Wubi and the root.disk is missing (as it appears to be) you will need to find it. Look for it on the drive you installed to. Search for it in hidden folders C:\FOUND.000 (xp) or it may be renamed to something C:\chk0000.chk
If you need more help please create a separate question and describe in detail you problem.

For what is worth, I was having the same issues after having Ubuntu 11.0.4 up and running for over a month. After looking at the files system under Windows I noticed that my root.disk file had 0 bytes. Something, either Windows 7 or Ubuntu itself, corrupted the file. Luckily I had a backup of my computer including my ubuntu install so I was able to recover by replacing the bad root.disk file with a previous version. Hopefully this information would throw some light into this problem.