Ubuntu Installation :: Dual Boot Installation On A Laptop?
Dec 11, 2010
I'm a complete an utter newbie on this forum, and indeed to linux/ubuntu in general so pardon me in advance if some of my question makes no sense/sounds silly/makes you want to exterminate all noobs. Basically, I've had bad experiences (i.e. had to use my recovery system) trying to install a dual boot system with OpenSuse and want to get some sound advice before I proceed with installing Ubuntu, instead of having to go through the agony of formatting and recovering Vista HP again, and consequently trying to teach it all over again how to suck less.
Okay, so less waffle and more questioning. Background information is that the laptop is a Compaq F560. It has at present Win Vista 32 HP on the primary partition (C), with a recovery partition on (D). It has a very basic, almost un-alterable BIOS, 1.5Gb of RAM, 120Gb HD, standard CD rom, integral nVidia 6100m graphics card, a broadcom wireless network adaptor and various other bits n' bobs.
When installing OpenSuse last time I found 2 huge flaws with my method. First one is, that I didn't have wired networking available to me at the time, and foolishly forgot to get hold of the wireless adaptor drivers before installing Suse. No biggy you say, just go back to windows and download from there. Great, except I'd bozzed up the MBR too, so couldn't do that. Suse, for it's part, ran fine. Very smooth. I just couldn't do anything with it.
What I'm now looking to do, is give Ubuntu a shot, as part of a dual boot system, with Vista on the other half. I want to make vista the default boot system. I DONT want to have to go through my compaq's recovery system again, if possible. To meet these objectives, Ultimately, I'd like to transfer all of my operations across to Ubuntu, but I'm too windows-dependent at the moment, though some sort of windows-emulator wouldn't be a bad idea if anyone knows where/how/what.
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Dec 21, 2010
On duel booting windows 7 and ubuntu on an hp laptop. All 4 partitions are taken up. I know i need to delete one partition to make room for ubuntu. Should I delete the windows recovery or hp partition? Or is there another option?
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Mar 8, 2011
I will be buying a laptop in the coming months for college and my intention is to run Ubuntu as my primary operating system, but I still want to have Windows 7 as a crutch. I know there are multiple ways to do this (Wubi, seperate hard drives etc.) but I was wondering if it were possible to just install it and if there were an option to partition your existing hard drive so they are virtually seperate from each other.
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May 19, 2011
I put Ubuntu on my G60 hp laptop a few months ago and have not touched Windows 7 since. How do I go about removing windows and leave linux with access to the entire hard drive?
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Apr 7, 2009
I just searched the forum for ibex and nothing turned up - but I've recently had a surprising experience worthy of a thread (IMHO). Used to be an UBUNTU devotee, until this and working at netuxo.com which is taking me to debian...
Was making a dual boot laptop, and found that on THREE seperate attempts UBUNTU ibex, whilst it would of course make a near flawless laptop install replete with wi-fi it would NOT permit windoze to remain in the MBR or indeed on the drive. In a fashion reminiscent of M$ it took a fascist attitude and insisted on owning the machine, in one case actually stealing the partition, despite selecting option to only use free space. In the other two it just messed the MBR up.
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Feb 1, 2010
I recently bought a refurbished HP Compaq NC6000 which had a new installation of Win XP put on it but takes about 5 attempts to boot up as it just sat at the load screen and freezes. So I decided to install Ubuntu 9.10 as a Dual boot with the view to getting rid of XP once I had Ubuntu up and running, which I have now. So cant understand why XP wouldn't work lol. Now I would like to fully get rid of XP and just have Ubuntu as the only OS on the laptop. Currently as it is Dual Boot I have my 80gig Hard drive partitioned with both OS�s on it.
Could someone point me in the right direction of how to get rid of XP cleanly so I just have Ubuntu left on my machine. I don�t really want to re-install Ubuntu as I have spent the last week getting it set up, so would it be possible just to get rid of XP? Also would getting rid of XP mess up the Grub Boot loader menu?
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Oct 11, 2010
Installing Ubuntu on the laptop said it succeeded and required a restart, then before shutting down and after the cd popped out a string of
end_request: I/O error dev sr0, sector 2xxxxxx...
end_request: I/O error dev sr0, sector
end_request: I/O error dev sr0, sector
Thing is, grub didn't install! I'm pretty sure a full install of ubuntu 10.10 in on a partition that I can't access. To complicate matters further, loading Vista necessitated a restart when it installed a "generic volume driver" by itself. Restarting vista doesn't show any difference (obviously since vista can't see linux formatted partitions).
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Mar 23, 2010
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.
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Jun 10, 2011
Im looking at getting a laptop and dual botting it with ubuntu and windows and my boss said when he did that on his laptop it caused all kind of problems, but that was 2-3 years ago. Is it still a big buggy doing this or should i be able to dual boot on any laptop i get?
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May 24, 2010
Every tutorial I've seen on installing a dual boot environment assumes you already have an installed OS (usually Windows). My wife's XP system is pretty hosed, and she's been interested in Ubuntu. Because she's ripe for an XP re-install anyway, I'm planning on backing up her data, completely wiping her hard drive, and installing a dual-boot Windows-XP/Ubuntu environment. Any good step-by-steps for this, with good hints on how to partition, etc.?
If not, my plan B is to reformat and install a basic XP system, and then follow one of the tutorials for going dual-boot over an existing install. Does that make sense? I should mention, I've used Linux for years as a user on my ISP, but have only been using Linux on a home system for a couple months; so I'm fairly new to the install and administer side.
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Dec 30, 2010
I have a MSI a6000 Laptop (that has given me a lot of problems installing Ubuntu.
I finally had to run Ubuntu from a CD in nomodeset
Then when I go to install Ubuntu the only options it gives (regarding my harddrive) are to format my whole hardrive or do the partitioning. I have seen screenshots though where there is a third option on the same page to install ubuntu alongside a prior OS and dual boot.
Does anyone know why the "install alongside a prior OS (dual boot)" option doesn't show up?
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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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Feb 4, 2010
After having tested Ubuttu 9.10 on a VM with Win XP Pro as host and running both Ubuntu 9.10 and 8.04 from a CD/CDR drive I decided to do an installation of 8.04 on a separate HD and import files.Installation seemed to work OK, but on reboot: no menu was shown to choose OS and the machine booted directly into Windows.Tried to boot directly from the "Ubuntu" HD in the BIOS boot menu and get the message "MBR error" full stop literally.The Ubuntu hard drive is no longer recognised in Windows , can't be acessed from the DOS prompt and obviously cannot be reformatted from there.Just for the record, I'm not totally excluding operator error from the cause
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Jun 7, 2010
I am trying to install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS on a Windows XP Media Centre Edition system.On the Step 4 of the installation which usually gives you the option to partition the disk but it only gives me the option to Erase the entire disk or specify partition manually, although this also doesn't allow anything other than totally erasing the disk. I'd ideally like to keep my Windows and I have installed Ubuntu before (but 9.10) on a different system.
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Oct 5, 2010
Ive managed to get myself in a bit of a hole through fears of destroying my WinXP on a new dual boot installation. I�ve been using Ubuntu (10.04 lts) alone on an old machine which died, so I thought I�d just move the hdd to my main machine & dual boot it with XP.
I booted from the 10.04 lts CD to set this up, I let it do as it suggested & assumed it would see the existing Ubuntu installation & modify it to dual boot with Win XP. Which it did except I now have two instances of 10.04 on the second hdd as it added a second partition for the new. Leaving the already installed 10.04 alone. I saw no options other than the advanced partitioning which I did not look at.
How please can I correct this & go back to having just one instance of 10.04 on the Ubuntu disk to dual boot to � I am sure there must be an easy way. I have nothing on the Ubuntu disk I need to preserve. I know nothing about Linux command line.
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Nov 2, 2010
I'd just like to express my disappointment in the new installation manager you have, it is a massive downgrade from the previous ones. When I tried installing via your new manager it presented me with a few problems, first of all it would not correctly detect my partitions, I have 2 separate partitions, my windows and what acts as my play around, I install Linux distros, play around and install another when I get bored or run into bugs, so this is not my first time installing anything. When I tried installing I assumed the option to "Install alongside other OS'" would work perfectly, but instead of asking to remove what was openSUSE (which is what it would do in previous versions and other installation managers)and just install Ubuntu on top, instead it wanted to resize my windows partition and install next to that, this is obviously not a good idea because it would cause a lot of problems for windows, and windows wouldn't boot without me running a repair. So I tried using GParted to delete my openSUSE installation. I then tried to install the same way, but with no luck, it; didn't see the free space. So I manually set a swap of 2GB and the rest of the partition as ext4 starting in "/" (This is the only way it would work and have no idea what it means). Ubuntu installed and works... however.
I am also disappointed in the lack of control over the installation when it finally happens. First off, it starts to install even before you have selected where you are, with no option to stop, or pause. Second, it does not ask whether you actually want GRUB, which OS is going to be booted by default and how long it should display options before booting. Third, it assumes you want the root password to be the same as the user password and has no option to add more than one user or set a separate root password.
This installer is an insult of peoples intelligence. I'm a windows guy, but not that stupid. There is making it easy, and making it so damn easy no one ever learns anything, because it's all point-and-click.
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Jan 2, 2011
I decided to install a dual boot on my Sony Vaio recently.Installation has not gone well.I attempted to install latest version desktop 10.10 with a CD. I was able to choose a language, then screen went black. I heard some music after a few minutes but no video. I was eventually able to boot the system several times under recovery mode. Several other forums and posts suggest that the problem was with my Vaio graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GT 230M).After the initial dual boot screen, where I'm able to choose operating system, if I choose either Ubuntu or Ubuntu safe mode a bunch of text scrolls by and ends with.
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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.
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Nov 7, 2010
I recently bought a new Samsung netbook N310 and want to install dual-boot Debian lenny along with windows xp home edition. My CPU is like this: Intel Atom CPU N270 1.6GHz which architectures and kernels I should download from the cd installation? there are so many:alpha, amd64, armel, hppa, i386, ia64, mips, mipsel, powerpc, s390, and sparc.
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May 6, 2011
I have installed Ubuntu10.04.1LTS in my Desktop amd64 computer. I also downloaded the same version for i386 processors and tried to install the OS for my HCL Pentium Dual Core T4300 @2.1Ghz 4GB RAM laptop, details of which are given in the following two screenshots: dscf0105.jpg and dscf0106.jpg I already have Debian Lenny 5.0.4 installed on the laptop dscf0104.jpg and the laptop works fine when I run the Debian OS or Knoppix liveCD image stored in the HDD of the laptop. We all know that the Ubuntu LTS live CD leads to the following option: Screenshot.jpg However, in my laptop the operation freezes before we can reach the above option. The screenshot explains the situation: dscf0107.jpg I know I could always use one of the alternate downloads and install the OS from it. But my point of contention is: where is the matter going wrong? Can't we use the graphical installer CD to do a CUI installation?
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Jul 21, 2010
i just wanted to know that during a dual boot installation with windows xp, if fedora is installed after windows, where does the GRUB go on the hard disk? In the /boot partition or the MBR of the hard disk?
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Feb 27, 2011
I use DOS and WIndows XP for engineering and CAD work, and HAD a WORKING dual boot system, with NTLDR booting both systems. Now, after my attempts to add Fedora 14, I don't have ANY working OS. I don't know much of anything about Linux. I just wanted to add it to my to machine for safe and reliable web browsing and email. I know it can be used for much more, but that was just the initial goal.
I've watched a friend create a triple boot with Linux a couple years ago, and he wrote the procedure up for me. (I've seen the same procedure posted many places online.) It involves installing linux to a clean formatted XT3 OR XT4 partition and GRUB to the root of the same partition. Then you "DD" the first 512 bytes of the partition to a file "bootsect.lnx" in the primary partition. And finally, you reference "bootsect.lnx" in the Windows BOOT.INI.
I repartitioned the drive for Linux, using Partition Commander 11. It's structured like this. (sizes are my best recollection)
I booted from a Fedora 14 LIVE CD. Ran GPARTED from a terminal window. It identified the 100GB XT 4 partition as SDA7 and the 2GB Linux swap as SDA8. I figured this was the only place Fedora would go. So I started the installer.
It didn't tell me where it was going to install, but alerted me that I had FAT, FAT32 and NTFS partitions. I was given several choices and selected the option that would not touch those partitions. The installation proceeded, and I was never given the chance to tell the installer where to install GRUB. I had every reason to expect that it installed to the XT4 partition. On reboot, I now have a command line, "GRUB:" No DOS, WINDOWS or Linux.
Is there anyway to restore my DOS and WIndows booting under NT Loader? Or is it gone for good? I may want Linux, but I can't live without the DOS and WIndows for my work. If it IS possible to fix this can we do that BEFORE we get back to installing Linux?
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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 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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Jul 18, 2010
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
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Feb 10, 2010
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?
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May 7, 2010
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?
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Oct 18, 2010
I have searched and read threads about the Bitlocker, grub and TPM issues that might show up, but I can't draw any conclusions as some information contradict each other. To make sure I don't screw up my pc as thought I need to make a new post.
At work I'm supposed to run Windows 7 and encrypt the win-partition with Bitlocker. I have installed Windows, turned on the encryption and it ties into the TPM. But as I am moving over to the *nix department I want to run Ubuntu as dual boot to check everything rusn fine with all the systems I need. Before I installed Windows I partioned the disk:
1,5 GB for system/bitlocker requirement
147 GB for Windows, C:
85 GB which is empty where I intend to install Ubuntu (not formated yet)
I boot into Windows with my bitlocker/TPM key on an USB-stick. Without the usb-stick the pc won't boot. Now, before I try to install Ubuntu I want to make sure to do it the right so I don't mess up the Windows installation or won't be able to boot the pc at all.
There seem to be several "schools" to this. Some suggest I should have installed Ubuntu first, then Windows and then encrypt. Some say, no worries just fire away and install since you are not planning to read the windows-partition from Ubuntu. Or an alternative, install but make sure to deactive the encryption during installation. Some say, install but make sure grub is installed in (multiple choices) location.
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Nov 8, 2010
I'm trying to dual boot Win7 and Ubuntu WITHOUT using Grub. This is to support Bitlocker encryption.
I followed this guide, and now when I select Ubuntu I get a Grub> prompt and no ubuntu.
I feel like I'm halfway there, I just need to get Grub to load correctly or something.
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