8.04 Installation problem

while in windows go to control panel, system, advanced, start up & recovery. at the the top of the window that will open will be the default os. look in there to see if ubuntu is even there. If it is then there was a problem installing grub. If it isn't there then it was a bad install, maybe a bad disk. Why not download a 9.10 image and make a new disk?

Hi :)

Errr, i would avoid a Windows route at all personally. Before install Ubuntu on any 'new' hardware setup it is well worth trying the LiveCd to check it works easily
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
Getting a LiveCd to work is much easier and can provide insight to what may need to be done after install in terms of "BootOptions" (really boot parameters) and other things.

Once you get a LiveCd session working it might help us if you could copy&paste the output of

sudo fdisk -l

where " -l" is a lower-case " -L". This usually helps us find out what linux calls the various partitions and drives on your system. At the moment your system sounds quite confusing anyway so this should help a lot! :))

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)

This definitely sounds like a grub issue.

Since windows boot normally without seeing grub menu, we know that grub did not install the MBR of the windows drive.

Grub may have been installed to the partition or the MBR of the non-boot drive.

Please check by booting to the new hard drive......Go to your bios and set the 500G drive as the primary boot device. If ubuntu loads then we know grub was installed to the MBR.

If this is the case, and ubuntu loads, please tell..........whether or not there is a windows entry in your grub menu. Also tell it windows loads properly when you select this option.

Thanks
Wyatt

Hi :)

Yes it is definitely a grub (= GRand Unified Boot-loader) issue. Well almost definitely ... If Ubuntu has been installed to an external hard-drive then it could possibly be a bios issue but my money would be on grub.

There seems to be a little confusion about
bios - MBR - grub
although Wyatts suggestion should sort the problem as it deals with both of the probable causes of the problems here.

Each hard-drive has only 1 MBR (= Master Boot Record) and this is really just a pointer to tell the boot-process where to go to find "the" boot-loader. When people say "fix the Mbr" this seems to imply that it was 'broken'. However, it is the other use of the word "fix". Think about it in terms of "fixing a horse race". When you get Windows to "fix the mbr" you are making sure that the Windows boot-loader gets used. The Windows boot loader (ntldr) is really bad at dealing with other Operating Systems on your machine and does not like giving people a choice because it confuses them. However, the linux boot-loader (grub) always searches around and tries to include any other OSs it can as other choices in its menu. So in order to be able to use both Windows and Ubuntu easily you really need to "fix" the mbr to point at grub.

However, there is a neat trick you can do if the bios is sufficiently advanced or if you used an external hard-drive to install Ubuntu onto. The trick means you can leave the Mbr of the Windows drive alone.

Ok, so what we see of the boot process ...
1. splash screen from your mbord
2. very basic hardware detection, looking for hard-drives, cd/dvd-drives but not usb/external. "Primary Master ... Ok", "Secondary Slave ... Ok" and such-like
3. bios does more sophisticated hardware detection, sorts possible conflicts. We see tables of "IRQ" and "Interrupts" and stuff like that.
4. MBR (we don't actually see this doing anything)
5. boot-loader. Windows gives no choices but grub would give us a menu here usually
6. Operating System (either Windows, linux, mac or whatever) boot process starts. We start to see things like orange or blue bars moving across the screen or swift lists of programs loading and processes starting.

Note that linux gives people "Freedom OF choice" whereas Windows gives "Freedom FROM choice".

I find it interesting that many resistance movements such as the suffragettes fought or fight hard for the right to have choices rather than suffer dictatorships and such-like BUT people often seem happier when they are given no choice and can only complain about that lack of choice. Hmm, ok i am a hypocrite because i failed to vote last time too. Ooops, i really shouldn't talk about politics in here so this post may well get deleted.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)