no wubildr

If you use magicdisk or daemontools, you can mount the ISO (Windows cannot do this without 3rd party tools) and you can install Wubi from there. Does it make a difference?

Identical in every way.
The first thing that pops up when I run WUBI is that dialog box labeled: pyrun.exe - No Disk with the contents reading: There is no disk in the drive. Please insert a disk into drive. \Device\Harddrive\DR1 and there'll be a line for DR2, DR3, DR4, DR5. However when I press "continue" enough times it finally goes away and ubuntu seems to install as it should. After the installation and I reboot I get the message I described earlier with the bottom line that says: Error: cannot find GRLDR in all devices. Press ctrl+Alt+Del to reboot.

For 'grldr' message: http://ubuntu-with-wubi.blogspot.com/2011/01/wubildr-wubildrmbr-and-grldr.html

For information on the "No disk", please review the bug I linked to.

This is getting exasperating!
Ok, I did fine the pyrun.exe-No Disk report and ended up DISABLING the listed drives of my internal card-reader through Device Manager. And turned off my printer which has a card reader in it. That eliminated those errors. Again Wubi seemed to install Ubuntu until it came time to reboot. The two wubildr files were in the C:\ only. I tried renaming them as suggested, but the wubildr files were reinstalled during the installation process. Now I have the GRLDR and WUBILDR files there in the root of the C: drive. I checked the recovery partition and did not find the wubildr files there. I did notice that there were two of each of those files in the c: drive with a time code of two minutes apart.
I used WUBI on an old XP machine I've got and it worked fine on it. :-(

You don't need a file called grldr. You can delete that.

You have \ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.mbr <-- this is called from the windows boot manager.

WUBILDR.MBR is looking on all partitions for \wubildr so all you need in 'any' root is \wubildr

If you have a C:\wubildr and it's not finding it then... there's something preventing wubildr.mbr from finding it. I'm just not sure what that would be - if not one of the regular known issues.

You could copy it to the first partition (hd0,0) (old zero-based index) or /dev/sda1 in current thinking.

Nothing seemed to work so I just gave up and installed ubuntu to my HD along with Windows (dual boot). Then it looked like I jumped out of the frying pan into the fire - Windows wouldn't boot. Ubuntu did and worked fine. Made several tries booting windows and it ran through some self-fixing routines. Meanwhile I was trying to figure out what to do next. Thinking this was going to be an MBR problem. Just when I was about to give up windows fixed itself.
This was the first time I've had any issues with ubuntu, but this one really put me on guard from here on out.

Maybe someone could point me to the directions for removing ubuntu and restoring my HD to its original configuration just in case I have too many problems and decide to dump it.

Thanks for the suggestions so far...

With win vista/7 it's better to use the built in Disk Management to shrink
your windows partition and then install into that space. Windows places
some ntfs file table somewhere in the middle of the partition and needs to
repair itself if it's moved by gparted.
That's probably what happened.

Uninstalling a normal dual boot is simple:
1. Install the windows bootloader... boot from windows repair CD and run:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
2. Make sure your computer boots straight into Windows
3. Delete the Ubuntu partitions from the windows Disk Management console.

You should also create some Windows Restore DVDs to be able to restore your
computer to factory settings. Also create a Windows repair CD.

Thanks bcbc.
I just checked the partitions in windows disk management. Things have changed. There used to be a FAT16 Dell Diagnostic partition that's gone. The one thing that did surprise me was when I installed ubuntu I reduced the size of the ubuntu partition before and the computer took quite awhile to process that. Now I notice the partition reverted to what it wanted. What I mean was ubuntu wanted 350GB and I reduced it to 200GB, but it used 350GB anyway. This was selecting the "custom" install. I think 11.10 needs some work yet.

It's a bit unusual for a partition to be removed. If this is true the it's a bug that should be filed. I'd be curious to see the bootinfoscript results. Download and instructions here: http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/

You can post the results here: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/ and then return here with the pastebin address.

Ok, here it is: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/726575/
I guess it didn't delete that partition. The labels are gone though that identified them. I notice too that windows doesn't identify the linux partitions as to file system. I tried to include a screen-capture image, but I guess you can't do that here.

That bootinfoscript output is incomplete - it looks like it ended with errors:
boot_info_script.sh: line 1888: ( / 2 ) + 16 : syntax error: operand expected (error token is "/ 2 ) + 16 ").

But the label for the dell utility does seem to be there:
Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/sda1 07D9-0703 vfat DellUtility

So not sure why that wouldn't show up in the Windows Disk Management.

I wonder if it's worthwhile trying version 0.55 of the bootinfoscript (the 0.60 was updated fairly recently to keep up with updates to the Grub2 bootloader, but it's not much good if you can't get all the info). http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/files/bootinfoscript/0.55/

But that's probably not an issue for you - it looks like everything is working - then I guess there's nothing further to do. You might want to create a bug about it using more space than you intended. Here's the link for that: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+filebug

There was a big difference in the bootinfoscript. Here's the link: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/726676/
If you'd check it out and give me your opinion I would appreciate it.
Thanks...

Yeah that looks a lot better. Nothing bad there - the only thing you can't see on the 0.55 bootinfoscript is the partition that the grub bootloader points to, but that didn't work on 0.60 for you either (and it's obviously working if you can boot your computer).

The only thing I'd comment on is that there doesn't appear a way to boot your Windows recovery partition (/dev/sda2). Which isn't a big deal - most people don't need to factory restore unless something major goes wrong. But - what I was wondering is how you normally load that i.e. my recovery partition (del xps l502x and inspiron n4010) is also the boot partition. In my old dell you had to use the bootloader (custom dell one that monitored for a certain key combination as it booted). If that is the case, then likely you can't boot into it since you replaced it with Grub2's bootloader. (Refer to your user guide to check - in which case restore dvds would be required.)

Anyway - basically it all looks good. And you can probably get rid of C:\grldr

Thanks very much for your help and comments.
I'm trying to remember how the Dell Restore was run. I think it was a choice in the Setup Menu by pressing F2 at bootup. It is probably irrelevant anyway since the computer shipped with VISTA with the free upgrade to Win7. However, I'm covered in that I have a DVD with Win7/SP1 and I have a couple of recent HD images made with Acronis and Easeus.

I guess we didn't get the WUBI situation resolved, but hey, Win7 and Ubuntu are up and running and I learned a lot in the process.
Thanks again,
--Steve