Ubuntu :: Dual Boot With Xp - Corrupts Primary HDD MBR
Jun 7, 2010
I want to install Ubuntu 10.04 on a second HDD than my windows xp installation. The second drive is on the same ide ribbon as the primary HDD (xp) and is set to slave. When i installed ubuntu on the second HDD it corrupted my primary drives MBR. It was an easy fix but every attempt i make ends in the same result. I also have another HDD that is sata and the sata controller is a via pci expansion card. Installation of ubuntu to this drive as well also corrupts my primary HDD MBR. But when I install to the same HDD the dual boot works fine.
I was thinking of unplugging the power cable from the primary HDD, then installing ubuntu to one of the separate HDDs. Would i still be able to dual boot. And which drive would be optimal for a dual boot installation in this configuration.
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Jan 28, 2011
Should I first partition my HDD using partitioning software (Gparted ETC.)? I have Win7 as my primary but I just want some sort of linux OS on my laptop. I only want to give it 30GB, and I checked the partitioning helper that ubuntu 10.10 has on its installer and quite frankly, it sucks.
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Dec 27, 2010
Six months ago I installed Ubuntu 10.04 to my otherwise Win XP work laptop. I decided to continue to use Windows' boot loader as primary: I told the Ubuntu installer to put grub2 onto a separate partition, then used dd to copy the first 512 bytes into a file in my Windows C partition, then edited boot.ini to link to it - its a common technique that is described in many support forums and blogs. This worked fine, and continued to work until a few weeks ago. One day I chose the Ubuntu option at the Windows boot loader and got a blinking cursor at top left of screen and no grub2 menu. I was able to use SuperGrub2Disk to discover and boot from my grub2 install - so that didn't appear to be broken. I finally fixed it by dd'ing a fresh copy of the first 512 bytes of my /boot partition over to the Windows C partition. So somehow the Windows boot loader decided it no longer liked my original dd'ed file.
The only things I can think of that might have changed and caused this to happen are (on Ubuntu) an update to security packages using the graphical update manager that pops up (I rarely do a command line apt-get upgrade/dist-upgrade and certainly not in this time frame) and (on Windows) a Windows Update - as it is a work laptop I tend to take whatever essential updates it suggests. As you can see I managed to fix the problem. However does anybody have any similar experience or any explanation why this may have happened? Could an over-zealous Windows Update have caused it?
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Mar 10, 2010
I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 this evening. I have a Nvidia Geforce 8500GT video card with two monitors hooked up (one to the cards VGA, the other to the DVI). I installed Nvidia drivers and Ubuntu is working with both monitors fine.
The problem I am having is it chose the monitor plugged into VGA as the primary (uses that monitor for the toolbars) when I really want them to go on the monitor that is plugged into DVI. Is there anyway for me to switch which monitor Ubuntu treats as the primary?
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May 14, 2010
I use Ubuntu Netbook Remix, and I've installed Lucid over Karmic. (Not an upgrade process, because I didn't have enough space on my primary drive.) I have an Acer AL1511 LCD screen attached as a second screen - ie dual head. All that works fine. However....
I rely on xcalib from Stefan Doehla to invert my screen gamma ramps, ie turn them to white text on black backgrounds. This worked perfectly, just using
xcalib -i -alter
but now, xcalib only inverts the netbook screen. The second screen remains stubbornly unaffected.
Since xcalib has not changed, and it works on one screen, maybe something changed between Karmic and Lucid.
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Sep 11, 2010
I run a dual-screen setup, and the installation detected both screens without troubleowever I want to change primary screen, so the panels and menus will be located in the biggest monitor.I am not able to do this in the System -> Preferences -> Monitors interface. Where can I do this simple operation
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Jan 8, 2010
Hi I am new to ubuntu and am having major problems setting my displays up. my setup is a hd TV to the Left of my pc monitor, i have managed to configure catalyst to let me have a main display with the second display being an extension of the first, the problem is i cannot seem to swap my primary display, at the minute my HDTV has all the taskbars and everything on it while my pc monitor is just a blank background, i would like it so i could start a film playing for my children, then drag it across to the HDTV while i can still use my pc in the background.
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May 10, 2010
I was unsatisfied with the 40second boot time of lucid and was searching for a solution for a while but didn't find anything yet. But today I found a way to boot 10seconds quicker.Lucid is installed here as suggested by the installer:
Primary rootpartition (/dev/sda1)
Logical partition (/dev/sda4)
swap (/dev/sda5)
[code]....
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Dec 14, 2009
One question:An OS only can boot from primary partition, not in an extended partition ?
grub 0.97
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Oct 3, 2010
I have a windows xp and i wanted to install slackware 13.0, i specified the partitions in cfdisk, and when i tried to write the partitions in the disk, the error came as "THE DOS MBR CANNOT BOOT TWO PRIMARY PARTTIONS" I already have windows xp installed in my laptop. What could be the reason..?
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Jul 12, 2010
I'm setting up my laptop to dual boot (default Vista installation and Ubuntu). There's also a possibility I may add XP later as a triple boot.
My laptop came with two partitions already, the second one labelled "Recovery". I was planning on adding three partitions, one for the Ubuntu installation, one for Swap, and one for storing my files (accessible to both OSs). However, this would be five partitions (or six, if I add XP later).
I've never had to deal with this many partitions before and just learned about the maximum of four primary partitions.
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Dec 21, 2010
A bad install of linux gave me a grub that won't go away. My only hope of restoring my Windows XP and retrieving the data that was backed up (most wasn't) is to somehow access the recovery partition. That's still there. The primary partition was wiped out. This is a remanufactured system: I -don't- have a Windows CD. I -don't- have fdisk. I -don't- have any of the utility disks I'd normally use (they're 300 miles away, buried in snow and ice right now).
I do have a disk and a thumb drive with the Windows boot files on it, but grub doesn't recognize these. If I could just get rid of that grub file, I think I could boot from either the thumb drive or the cd, or even the partition with the recovery files on it, but I can't get rid of grub. I think even if I could get fdisk on either a cd or thumb drive, grub would override it. Any one know how to kill that file WITHOUT fdisk and WITHOUT the Windows CD? I have live Linux disks, Ubuntu 8.10 and 10.10 have been the most promising, but still can't do this.
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Jan 31, 2011
I have added a new sata HDD and this caused my fstab to becoming corrupted. I opened the fstab within a live cd and I changed it to the new setup. But I am still getting an error.
My old setup:
sda on PATA
Windows 7
Linux /root
Linux swap
[Code].....
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May 15, 2010
On a certain computer, I had four primary partitions. The person who installed the Windows 7 on the computer made two partitions for the Windows (sda1 and sda2). Then I made another two primary partitions (sda3 and sda4). sda3 was empty. sda4 is an extended partition that contained the /swap, and /.According to someone else, some viruses get in on the Windows partitions and can then get over to the Linux partitions if they are primary and right after the Windows partitions, or something like that. This person suggested that I create sda3 when I install Linux(SLES 10), but to install Linux on sda4. Then later I can change sda3 to secondary.So I tried this, and the Linux installation went fine.
I decided to change sda3 before I load the application software onto the computer.So I put the GParted CD in, but to my surprise I realised that the harddisk was actually 1 TB, and not 500 GB as I thought. So I had extra space to the right of sda4. I wasn't quite sure what to do with sda3. I thought that perhaps it would be better to unallocate sda3, move the current sda4 to the left, and then make another primary partition on the right of sda4, or just stretch sda4 both ways.Anycase, I unallocated sda3, and just left sda4 as it was.Hm, perhaps you can anticipate the end of the story. I removed the GParted CD, and restarted the computer, but now the computer doesn't let me choose whether I want to boot into Linux or Windows. Um, it doesn't boot at all from the harddisk.
I know it's dangerous to play with partitions, but sometimes the job won't be done if you are too afraid of doing anything, and I dare say you won't learn anything either. There was nothing on sda3, so I didn't think it would have nasty after effects. There isn't any important data on this computer yet, it was two new installations of Windows and Linux. So I guess I could format the harddisk and just reinstall everything, but I would like to learn what goes on underneath the surface.
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Nov 22, 2010
I managed to do something that takes real talent to do: I broke my Slackware. I was chowning something for a user and, as I was really sleepy, accidentally entered "chown -R user /". It really didn't break, but it started to get glitchy because I couldn't fix it well enough. Then I rage-quit the game and wiped my whole drive except for my personal files. So now I'm here to learn how to properly install Slackware64 current out of the box and hear suggestions regarding partitioning schemes. First of all, I'm aware Alien Bob has a script to help automate the upgrading of the system. Is it the mirror-slackware-current.sh? Then what should I do? Install Slack and run the script or can I download things from another distro (I have Arch installed - love LXDE!) and use the Slack DVD to boot and choose it as the source?
If the suggested method is to install Slack first and go from there, I should upgrade slackpkg first, right? My other question is regarding partitioning schemes. I have an 160GB hdd and I used to follow this format: a small (200MB) primary /boot, a primary 20-30GB /, a primary 100GB (give or take) /home and the rest as an extended distro-hopping partition (at the moment I'm building LFS) plus swap. The thing is that I've been noticing a big inconvenience in this method. I have around 40GB left and sometimes I get curious about distro x or y and want to install it so I have to change the logical partitions and my swap gets renamed, which makes me have to edit my fstab. I already changed this setting sda1 to be swap. I'll be installing in a desktop personal computer. Some college work, but nothing too hardcore.
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Feb 3, 2010
I have XP on my IDE hard drive and Ubuntu on my USB hard drive (which is really an IDE drive with a USB adapter and external power souce). We've used Windows once in the past month, so we decided to jettison it. Two questions: 1. Can we simply delete all partiitions on the IDE hard drive and reformat or will this cause problems? 2 Is the write-speed gain worth switching the drives out, putting the Ubuntu drive in my IDE slot and my freshly wiped drive on the USB adapter?
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Jun 5, 2010
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.
[Code]...
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Aug 13, 2010
I currently have a dual boot on my 160gb hdd, but even that feels cramped. i was wondering...I have a spare 40gb harddrive compatible with my laptop. could I just install the windows 7 installation there?
assumably i'd swap in the appropriate windows 7 hdd whenever i'd want to load windows 7 at Grub.
what do you guys think?
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Jul 14, 2010
This problem started after I moved from ubuntu 9.10 (64bit) dual core to 10.04 (64bit) quad core machine. On both machines, I have svn working directories in an NTFS partition since I dual boot between Vista and Ubuntu - which gives me the opportunity to work on my projects whether I am on vista or ubuntu. My fstab entry is very simple:
UUID=62B81CE6B81CBA8D /media/ntfsdata ntfs-3g defaults 0 0
I use either RapidSVN or RabbitVCS. Whenever I commit those folders to the SVN server(google code), the folders seem to get corrupted. After which a rebuild or a refresh on Eclipse would provoke a 100% use on one of my 4 cpus. It would just hang there and the ntfs partition would not be accessible at all until I killed ntfs-3g process.
Then I would have to boot on vista to repair that partition. The gparted repair utility is USELESS because it cannot spot any partition errors caused by the svn commit. The dual cpu machine had occasional similar trouble but I never needed to repair it. SVN would not kill the ntfs-3g, but eclipse rebuild project after an svn operation would. I could prevent ntfs-3g hangup by checking off build automatically after a svn operation and close all projects and reopen one at a time to refresh.
A refresh would trigger a rebuild. On the phenomenally faster quadcore machine, the speed of operations could be too quick for ntfs-3g to handle (may be??). It looks like ntfs-3g is unable to handle high number of files at high speed operations. I use the same ntfs partition to store high volume bulk copy and bulk downloads with no problems - apparently, it is not the problem with high volume of transfer but the high number of files being thrashed back and forth at high speed by eclipse and svn commit. Does anyone else store their svn working directories on ntfs when developing with Eclipse on ubuntu 10.04?
Further addition: I need to mention that partition is compressed under ntfs. Perhaps, ntfs-3g is not capable of handling compressed ntfs. I uncompressed them - and during uncompress operation, explorer hung at the folder where I had done the svn commit. I rebooted vista and made a fresh uncompressed copy of those svn working folders and deleted the old copy. I'll wait and see what happens on my next commit using rabbitcvs.
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Jun 4, 2011
I'm using 10.04.2, and I find that whenever I'm trying update (whether using synaptic, or command-line apt-get), the package download starts off fine, but after downloading a few files (usually only 4 or 5), the next partial (ongoing) downloads become corrupt, all the remaining downloads stay in the partial folder and finally apt-get gives a size mismatch error .I'm forced to watch the update progress the entire time and wait for the downloads to corrupt (at this point the progress bar stops at say, "Downloading file 4 of 70" but the details show subsequent files are being downloaded)the update process and clean the /var/cache/apt/archives/partial folder (NOT the archives folder, or all the packages will have to be downloaded again). Then I restart the update and it picks up after the last successfully downloaded .deb.
Effectively, every such iteration downloads 3-5 .deb files successfully, and corrupts the remaining. Needless to say, if I'm upgrading 50 packages, it gets really frustratingI faced this problem even on new installations on my system as well as a friend's. Lucid, Maverik, Natty all have the same problem. By new installations, I mean on the very first boot, I setup the network (I'm behind a proxy server in a university) and that's it. I tried Linux Mint and it had the same problem.
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Aug 7, 2011
After a fresh boot the first few songs I play with Banshee or Rhythmbox (only used for testing if Banshee was the issue) the songs start to be played badly distored. Like the sound is only being played in very short bursts with gaps between them.
If I restart Banshee the music will usually resuming playing fine for a couple of songs and then the issue repeats. If system load is high the number of songs before the issue appears decreases (as low as 0).
I've attached the output of the alsa-info.sh as I see 90+% of audio issue threads ask for that file in the first reply
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Dec 30, 2010
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.
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Jan 6, 2010
Ok, this just started happening with ubuntu 9.10.
When it first happened, I didnt know what to do so i accessed all my data, backed it up in a diff partition, reformated my drives and reinstalled a clean 9.10. But now, every now and then (i think its when i use frostwire and have other programs running) my ubuntu keeps freezing up, it becomes non-responsive to anything i do, so i have to do a hard shutdown, after which, when i reboot, it is not able to mount /home, so i run FSCK and it fixes it, but ive done this about 3 times now, its starting to get a bit annoying, i dont know if anyone else has this problem, or if its a known bug. Here are my specs:
Running: Ubuntu Karmic 9.10 64 bit
3 Sata HDD: 1 TB, 750 GB, 350 GB
4GB Ram
2 Nvidia 7900GS
with a Pentium core 2 duo @ 3.0GHz
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Feb 27, 2010
I switchted my windows friend over to kubuntu and I installed the kubuntu-restricted-extras as well as the ubuntu-restricted-extras and at first amarok was flawless. Now, every time I quit amarok and reopen it, my media library is still there but when I try and play anything it just stops and does nothing.
Then I go to my /.kde/share/apps/amarok directory and clear it and it works again if I open it and reimport the music, but this is a bitch to do every time. I briefly tried rhythmbox also and it seemed to be suffering from the same problem although I didn't try deleting the preferences and testing if it worked after, it also refused to work after quitting. Note: it might get corrupted on reboot only or on quitting
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Aug 3, 2011
With tar, it is possible to back up your desktop system like so (probably best done from runlevel 1 or a live medium):
# cd / # or wherever your root directory is mounted
# tar --exclude=dev/* --exclude=proc/* --exclude=sys/* --exclude=tmp/* --exclude=backup.tar.gz -czvpf backup.tar.gz .
[code]....
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Feb 5, 2010
I convinced my sister into trying linux instead of windows. When she agreed, I messed things up for her in the install and now her files are gone. I was trying to install Kubuntu. I had backed up all of the data into one partition (hda7 ... which is the last partition) and restructured the other partitions. When applying changes, it crashed in the middle so I had to start again and redo things.
Finally when everything was installed, I tried mounting the NTFS hda7 partition but to no success. Upon checking in fdisk, it was listed as ext3 but even could not mount it with ext3. I checked in windows and the partition is marked as "unknown". what has changed is that instead of hda7 being logical, it is now marked as primary. I have checked testdisk and I am not able to recover any files from it. Any ideas?
1. Testdisk ... did not find any files from that partition
2. Partition magic ... got some messages that something wrong with the partition table, it fixed that, but get Error 17 and partition magic cannot start
3. chkdsk ... did not find anything
I read something about DD but I have never tried it and I am worried I might mess up things.
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Aug 16, 2011
i've tried both the gnome and kde installers and initially it boots fine to the first menu, but if i then select 'installation' or even try to boot to the live cd, the screen goes blank and then reappears as something that looks like the static on your television if you're trying to tune it in. if you let it continue to boot, then it goes blank again and comes back with a different corrupted screen, but this time you have a white block in the middle that is apparently the mouse point as i can then move it around.
i've tried it in VESA mode and even text mode and the same thing happens. the installation media checks out fine, and my graphics card is brand new - a Radeon 3650 HD. I might try an older version of suse and try and upgrade from there
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May 23, 2009
I have installed Open Suse 11.1 on two different machines. One contains an ATI X850 video card, and the other contains an ATI X1950 video card. I updated the ATI drivers on the 850 card and it works like a dream. I updated the ATI drivers on the 1950 card and Suse becomes unusable. System works fine before the update. Before the update I ran it at a resolution of 1280 x 1024. I thought I would lower it to 1024 x 768 to see if that would help, but it does not. I dual boot with WinXP, and card works fine with that setup at 1280 x 1024, so I would suspect this is a specific problem with my Suse setup as opposed to a Motherboard issue.
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Jan 18, 2010
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.
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Jul 8, 2010
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".
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