I'm new to the world of Linux, but am intrigued by the variety and functionality it offers over Windows. I have an external HDD from which I would like to dual boot Linux Mint, with Windows Vista (64 Bit) remaining on the primary internal HDD. I know that my BIOS supports dual booting and booting from USB devices (my external HDD). Are there any specific dangers I need to be aware of? Is it as simple as putting in the installation disc and selecting my external HDD?
I installed Ubuntu to an external hard drive and I wanted it to be a portable OS I could take with me and still maintain my settings and files and what not. My problem now is, I cannot boot into Windows without having the USB drive connected. I also cannot boot directly to the drive by selecting the USB drive from my boot options on start up, I have to let it go into the boot menu.
So I need help with being able to boot directly from the USB drive on any computer, and being able to boot into Windows without having the USB drive plugged in. Hopefully this can be done without re-installing Windows.
I installed ubuntu 10.04 on external usb hdd after having the internal drive disconnected. When now I try to boot i can only do it from the internal. I can see the external when in ubuntu, but no booting. Also I can see the external in the internal grub menu but when booting disappears. I suspect that it has to do whith the designation of volume names, when installing from external the disk is named sda1 but in the internal grub is sdb1. How can I change the name to sdba1 in the external grub
The thing is i want to have windows xp on my internal drive and ubuntu on the external. Not very hard but i want it so that i can choose what to boot when i start my computer and i also want to store other things then ubuntu on my external drive so i can use it in xp also
The reason i want ubuntu for is to use it while watching movies or chatting osv and use xp for games and my animation programs since they tend to be quite hard to get to work on ubuntu.
I installed Ubuntu on external USB hard drive and while booting I did got option to log into windows XP, Ubuntu. Both operating systems ran fine. i.e. GRUB had overwritten MBR and I was able to dual boot. Main issue: I have installed Ubuntu in external hard-drive so that I can use Linux whenever I want other people who are using same computer can operate on WindowsXP. Sometimes my external hard drive gives problem if there is loose connection and so that oper people using computer do not face any problem I want to disconnect external USB HD whenever I am not using Linux. GRUB menu was pointing to external hardrive so disconnecting it meant my system wont boot!!I rewrote MBR using WindowsXP CD recovery mode. Now I am unable to boot from external USB hard disk( I thought I would be able to if I choose USB hard drive in BIOS option but it did not work it logged into WindowsXP by default).Is there any way I can change WindowsXP boot.ini file so that it also shows Ubuntu in external hard disk? Or is there any way.(I do not want GRUB way as then I would have to keep my external drive connected to log into windows - which I do not want).
Recently, my Mint update informed me it had an upgraded kernel version of Mint 9 and asked did I want to upgrade. Me, not being an old hand at things Linux, upgraded. Instead of overwriting the older version, it put the upgraded version of Mint 9 BESIDE the older one. So now I have, actually, 4 versions of Mint 9 on my PC,(generic plus recovery mode for each) which is dual booted with Vista Home Premium.
I don't want this. I have had weird problems and hiccups since I upgraded. I want to get rid of the newer kernel version and use only the older one. How do I uninstall the upgraded version of Mint 9? I have tried to boot into the older version, but there is no desktop and I have to type on the boot screen and in the terminal. It wants commands I don't know how to give. How do I restore my older version of Mint 9?
I just want one version on my PC in the dual boot with Windows Vista. Can someone tell me how to accomplish this? If you give me terminal commands, please make sure they are copy and paste ready. lol.
If uninstalling involves deleting partitions and doing a manual partitioning and formatting, I'll need easy instructions for that also.
I have a dual boot ( Ubuntu 10.04 and Linux Mint), but I spend most of my time in the Ubuntu 10.04 partition. The point is that I have a huge files in the Mint compartment and I would like to gain access to those files from my Ubuntu 10.04 partition. I have tried samba and could not get the file sharing system to work. I had used samba when I was dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows and it worked but not in my present Linux dual boot.
I got to the part where I'm supposed to partition Mint. I've got a 500GB hard drive, and I thought I'd give 300GB to LM--but I'm unclear about using ext2, 3 or 4. What about the swap file? Is that automatic?
I think the title says it all really - I've installed Mint onto a Acer aspire 5315 laptop. Its a dual boot system using Vista Basic. Grub works perfectly and to be honest Mint is great. really enjoying playing and learning. My problem is that the laptop overheats when using Mint - the cpu fan doesn't cut in and the laptop shuts down to protect the system. According to a swift google this seems to occur with mint (possibly particularly with Acer's) and maybe with other distro's too. However I'd like to keep trying to see if i can find one that works.
So my rather obvious newbie question is can I just get another distro dvd and install this onto the partition containing mint thus deleting the previous install? If I did this would Grub show the new distro ok or would it keep searching for Mint. I have a back up so if all else fails I can reinstall everything but that will have to wait till I get home
I am dual booting windows and ubuntu. I bought a external hard drive to use as a backup solution. I like the idea of my external HD being an exact copy of my internal one so that if my internal one completely fails I can just plug my external one in and carry on (it's an internal drive in an enclosure).
I notice a lot of people use rsync to backup their home directory. Can I use rsync (or something else) to back up the whole drive including the Windows partition.
I have a very infuriating problem. I recently got a new computer and I wanted to put Mint 8 on it (as I already use it on my laptop). I tried to boot the live cd and the screen displayed the ISOLINUX version and then just went blank. After a few attempts I gave up and put in a Fedora 12 live cd I had lying around and it booted and installed without a problem. I really would prefer Mint to Fedora but it still refuses to boot from the Mint live cd. Is there any way I could install Mint from within Fedora? I want to use Fedora's partition for Mint.
I have Mandrake 7.1 installed on a laptop and I have several problems that an upgrade would likely fix or provide a path that will support a fix. The Mousepad is irratic and the PCMCIA WiFi and Ethernet cards are not recognized. What's a good way to upgrade? (I can access the network from an external modem and from a dual-boot Windows 98 WiFi)
have my workstation dual-booting Mint 7 and Windows 7. I had no problems installing either OS. But now I need to run some software that just won't run on Win7, not even in compatibility mode. So I have to use XP. So I installed XP Pro on a 1TB drive connected by eSATA. Again, no problems with the install, smooth and easy. BUT, and I'm sure you know where I'm going with this, XP jacked up the booting. I lost the grub menu, of course, and I had a hell of a time getting my system back to where I started. I removed the eSATA disk (with XP on it) but could not use the standard grub fix (find /boot/grub/stage1, root(hd0), etc, etc.). I used the Win7 repair utility and that restored my ability to boot into Win7. I then was able to use the grub fix and was back to square one.
I tried adding XP to the menu.lst (using the correct hd address and all) but when I selected XP from the grub menu it said BOOTMGR was missing. I'm assuming Win7 wiped it out when I ran the win7 repair utility.So, does anyone have any idea how I can "easily" boot XP from the eSATA disk? I've searched the forums here and I think my scenario is a bit different than other tri-bootonfigurations.I can't install the drive in the workstation because there are no more slots left for an HD to fit. So it has to be eSATA.
I had Win7 installed on my Laptop and wanted to set up a triple boot with Fedora 12 and Mint 8.So I installed Fedora 12 and it worked loading grub and offering Win7 and Fedora as choices.Then I installed Mint hoping for the Grub2 to recognise Fedora and set up the triple boot but it didn't and I can now only boot into Win7 or Mint.sudo update-grub doesn't help.How can I configure grub2 to offer me all three OSs?
I admit that I am a noob - knows a little which makes it more dangerous than not knowing at all. in brief, I am unable to boot one of the OS out of 3 I have installed. Everything is fresh install on newly formatted partitions.
Here are the details:Two HDs - one is Sata and second is IDE. Win7 installed on IDE (sdb2) then Ubuntu 9.10 on Sata (sda2) and lastly Linux Mint on Sata (sda3). Everyone was on its place - that is - Ubuntu 9.10 on sda2, Linux-Mint on sda3 and Win7 on sdb2.
Future of the day was bright and promising until I upgraded online to 10.04. After that, I was only able to boot to Win7 (IDE drive - sdb2 - not sure if it changed at that point or not) but no nix OS on Sata sda2 & sda3. I downloaded 10.04 and installed from CD again on sda2. Well, now I am able to boot into Win7 and Ubuntu 10.04 but no Linux-Mint. Another interesting thing is that sda and sdb have interchanged/swapped. So now if I chcek it thru gparted or run boot script, Sata drive shows up as sdb and IDE is now sda. In another post, I read that grub2 does that and make IDE drive as the first drive and Sata drive as second. Well, I buy that but why I am unable to boot to second OS on the same Sata drive? Evidently, I am missing something and I take that it is mostly user error but please
I have a computer with an Asus M2N68-AM plus mother board running Fedora 14 that will not show external usb flash drives or hard drives when I plug them in. I used to run Linux Mint 9 on this computer and switched to Fedora because of easier LVM support out of the box. Mint would mount these devices just fine.
To simplify the issue and rule out anything I did since the installation, I tested this on both the Mint 9 live DVD and Fedora 14 live cd (both 32-bit versions, if that makes a difference) with the same results.
Just to be clear, I'm still somewhat new to Linux. I'm reasonably sure it's an issue with seeing the devices in the first place and not just an auto-mounting problem.
I am quite experienced user of Ubuntu desktop / server distributions. Recently my desktop 9.10 disk failed and I decided to reinstall using 10.04. My configuration is a dual disk dual bot system. I have XP Pro SP3 on one disk and Ubuntu 10.04 on second. XP has own, untached MBR ubuntu got Grub 2 installed on the same disk as Ubuntu. Ubuntu disk is booting first in BIOS. Grub 2 detected both system, however I can boot only to Ubuntu. When I am trying to boot XP I got black screen only. Looks like booting is stack in BIOS stage, because crt+alt+del reset system.
I read Ubuntu forum, search Google and did not come with any solutions. My XP MBR is OK. I can boot directly, choosing XP HDD in BIOS as a starting disk. All entries in grub.cfg looks fine to me. I made 3 different clear installations of Ubuntu. Each with the same result. I reinstaled Grub2 with no effect. I wonder if this may be a hardware/Grub 2 compatibility issue. I am using quite old components.My motherboard is Assus P4C800 Delux. I have 5 HDDs 2 CD. Exactly the same configuration was OK with 9.10/XP dual disk dual boot using Grub legacy.
I have a DWA-130C (external wireless) and am trying to install the drivers for us in Linux Mint, I'm assuming this is done with ndiswrapper, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I am a begginer to Linux though I know the basics of using the console, packages and such.
I had a dual boot machine with fedora 12 and windows vista and I could use grub boot-loader to switch between two. Few days ago windows got corrupt and I have to reinstall it. I put windows 7 now and as usual it erased grub. So to reinstall I put the fedora 12 installation CD on and followed some usual setup steps. When I got the command line I issued the command "grub-install /dev/sda" (sda not hda because It showed bunch of sda, sda1..) but surprisingly it said grub command not found. I remember doing it before while it worked fine.
I got Mint 7 running on my Laptop, a Pentium 4 by Dell. It dual boots XP as well. But the mobile broadband which connects by the USB port only works in XP. There are small windows that say it will not run. Errors. How can I get this working in Linux?
I have a (slightly complicated) dual/multi boot system.
I keep getting boot errors (when choosing ubuntu from the grub2 menu)
Code: Serious errors were found while checking the disk drive for /boot
If I switch off and restart, ubuntu will then start without issue.
My setup is like this ....3 disks, one with 10.10 clean install - so Grub2, separate partitions for /, /boot and /home, one with windows 7, one with windows XP and 10.04 wubi (this is my old disk which I will trash once I'm happy with my upgrade to 10.10 & 7 on separate disks.
I installed 7 and 10.10 with ONLY their disks installed. After both were working, I added all disks and rejigged the grub2 menu (using update-grub and StartUp-Manager).
This problem only seems to occur if my previous boot was not 10.10 ( I will investigate this further). It's as if something (grub2 ?, the bios ?) is remembering part of the previous boot and not using the grub2 menu completely.
After installing ubuntu 9.10 on external HDD I cannot boot vista if external usb is unplugged(where ubuntu is installed). it says grub loading and after that recover grub ( i think that is what is says ... not certain in this moment ) anyway hope you get my dilemma. If you need more information I'll be glad to provide it.
Can Ubuntu install and boot from external HD while still booting windows off internal HD?In an attempt to spread Ubuntu my friend wants to use ubuntu off an external HD and still have windows fully operational on the internal HD. Questions:1) Can Ubuntu install on external HD without tricky mounting methods and if so how doabout it?2) The bois have the capability to boot from usb, will grub work?
I currently have XP installed on a NetBook (Samsung NC10), and would like to run Fedora on it. I'm currently looking at putting Fedora onto a flash memory card to test it works OK on the hardware, before installing it to the hard disk. The problem I've got is that the boot sector is occupied by WDE software (TrueCrypt). Will this pose a problem for dual-booting XP with Fedora, or will GRUB move the boot loader in the usual way?
Have just installed 9.10, again, many failed attempts previously.Cannot get to boot up and show menu on dual boot with Vista initially,However when I delete the grubenv file the system boots ok and works fine.But does not show the grub menu to choose boot up choices.Got the information to delete the file on some posts elsewhere about booting problem, and tried a longshot and got into Ubuntu for the first time from trying to install now for 3 months!The problem is the file grubenv is created each time so on subsequent boot ups the sytem fails to boot again.The Grub version is 1.97 beta 4, most up to date for Karmic I think, I have seen a version 1.98 but dont think its for Karmic?
Is there a way to modify the grub.cfg file to stop this problem ( all posts say dont touch this file??Or install a script to delete the grubenv file on shutdown as a workaround for me, (I have no idea how to do this whatsoever, I'm not familiar with linux at all)I did read that this problem was fixed/patched in Grub version 2, but dosn't seem.so on my system afetr I updated it when I got into Ubuntu.I couldnt find the patch or fix, I got the information I am on about from this post:URL...It seems to say it was fixed or patched by Colin Watson reading through, but I don't really understand whats being said or how to get the patch on my system if indeed there is one?Sorry for being a bit thick about all this, its a bit beyond my brain now, hope somebody can help out as I have enjoyed my brief bit of fun in Ubuntu.
I have a netbook running Windows XP as standard. There is also a recovery partition which came from the factory.
In the past I installed Ubuntu (I think 9.something) from USB key and all worked fine. However my XP became corrupted and I needed to do a repair on it. After this, Ubuntu became removed from the boot select menu.
Since then, Ubuntu has become updated to 10.04, which I now cannot install.
The Live CD tells me there is a "file IO error" and simply stops installation at around 70%.
I did manage to get into Ubuntu from a Live USB using Wubi. However when I chose to install Ubuntu to a Harddrive, the option to "install side by side" was missing.
After reading on the forums, I did a chkdsk /f on Windows and tried again. Now my liveUSB does not show a boot menu!
When I select to boot from USB stick, the screen goes blank with a flashing cursor. Ctrl+alt+dlt reboots.
I'm really lost here! It seems when I fix one problem, another problem arises!
Also when trying to instal Ubuntu within Windows, the process goes through to 100% and asks me to reboot. When I do so, the option for Ubuntu does show in the boot menu. However when I select it, I get an error "Windows boot failed: file wubildr.mbr and status: 0xc00000f - something is corrupt".
I have Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and Windows XP installed on my laptop. Usually when booting, I get the GRUB 2 menu and I can boot into either Ubuntu or XP.I was playing around with EasyBCD, then after trying to remove it I was unable to boot into Windows, I used a Windows 2000 CD recovery console to fix the MBR (using: fixboot and fixmbr).Now Windows starts up when I power on, but I don't get the grub menu anymore with an Ubuntu option. If I boot from the Ubuntu Live CD and try to mount my Ubuntu partition (/dev/sda5) I get this error:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda5, missing codepage or helper program, or other error In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
I recently got a netbook and setup as dual boot between win7 starter and 9.10 (64bit). Win 7 starter is not impressive so i want to nuke it and give the space all to my /USR partion. I am comfortable working with Gparted and assume that i can launch using my gparted live usb and delete the windows partion and then resize the /usr partion.
what changes do i need to make w/ Grub2? I would prefer not to see the Grub menu at all and have it load right the main kernel if possible. Also, if this is possible is there a way to get to the Grub menu during boot should i need to select a different kernel?
I have just installed Ubuntu 10.4 x64 onto a machine with Vista Ultimate x64. When I boot the machine, the Windows option comes up in the GRUB menu. However, when I attempt to boot Windows, I receive the following error: No such device: de80ab9f80ab7d21. error: No such partition. Press any key to continue...
I looked around and found a similar issue at [URL] However, before trying to fix the issue by guesswork or via solutions that worked for a similar, though not necessarily identical problem. I've run the boot info script (see output below) mentioned several places on this site as a valuable input for boot problem tracking. how to get Windows to boot on my computer?
