Ubuntu

xp and ubuntu are on same drive but can't solve dual boot problem

Asked by jesuslite2000

I have spent most of my 4 day weekend trying to install ubuntu alongside my xp pro with no real success. I finally unplugged my second hard drive (it will be used for storage for both operating systems later & I will format it later)My drive is broken down as followes by gparted (9 gig for xp at the start of the drive (NTFS) 7 gig for Ubuntu (EXT3) and 2 gig for Swap file) Now I installed ubuntu on the second partition. Then I installed xp onto it's NTFS partition and it works fine. Now I can't boot to Ubuntu. I use my Ubuntu CD to boot to a live mode from CD and look at gparted & sure enough all partitions are there and have space used for the instals of both systems.

Main question: After reading countless threads I can't understand how to install Grub so it works for xp and Ubuntu. I would run the Ubuntu install again to let it do it but last time I tried it says I have to choose a mount point (what is that) the last time I did that it made XP vanish.

I am decently fluent with windows, have built my last 2 comps and often do work on others systems to fix them, but the termanology for linux based stuff just doesn't ring true to one who like 90 some % of the rest of the population has been indoctinated by windows. With complications like this and fear of wiping out your other installs I can see why the average user would be scared to try ubuntu. I guess this is a side note to my question but I think that I am not alone here so mabey some people with the skill could look at making the install much more user friendly and not as easy to destroy your existing os's in the process. I sure don't like lining microsofts pockets but if I can't make them both play nice after 4 days of tweaking and 4 reinstalls at what point do I just revert to windows?

Anyways didn't mean to talk forever, appreciate any help here :)

Josh

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Nate Chrysler (nchrysler) said : 		#1

I'm no expert, but this might help. Basically when you installed Windows after installing Ubuntu, Windows overwrote the MBR where the grub bootloader was (partially) installed. So now it just boots Windows.

All you have to do is tell grub to install back into the MBR, and then update grub's menu so it includes an item for booting into Windows (as well as the default for Ubuntu).

Start grub from the command line (from a live CD):
sudo grub

Then in the grub prompt:
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0)
quit

The hd0,1 part tells grub to look for the rest of the grub menu information in disk 0, partition 1. (both are 0-based numbers, so its the 2nd partition on the first disk)

Then to add Windows to your grub boot menu, edit the grub menu file:
gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

There should be an example for Windows in the file already, just uncomment it since your first partition is Windows. For example, with a slightly modified title:

title Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

You may also want to change the value of "timeout" and "default" in menu.lst. If you're dual booting, you may want more than just 3 seconds to react to the menu before it boots the default OS.

Then reboot the machine and you should see the grub boot menu!

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Abi ^-^ (abiyasa-eka) said : 		#2

Look this
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows?highlight=(\bCategoryBootAndPartition\b)

hope this help

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