Ubuntu Installation :: Preserving Windows Drives On Switch?
Mar 15, 2011
I am switching to Ubuntu soon for security purposes. I have 3 hard drives, one with my OS, one with nothing, and one with all my junk. I was wondering if there is anyway that I can only reformat and install Ubuntu onto the drive with windows, reformat the empty drive, and then transfer files from my junk drive onto the empty drive, and then format the junk drive and move all of the files back onto the junk drive? Or is the junk drive accessible from Ubuntu and not worth trying to switch formats on?
I'm trying to install 10.10 to my home desktop that has Win xp. I have one ide hd with only windos on it and I have a sata hd partitioned logically for linux. The sata controller is a via chip on an old Abit mobo. The live cd works great but when I run the install and get to the partitioning, my sata disk becomes sda instead of sdb. From the live cd, gparted shows the sata as sdb. From live, "cat /proc/partitions" shows the sata disk as sdb. But during install gparted shows it as sda. The install will go on the correct drive, but I'm not sure where to put grub2. On another distro install, I left it at mbr, and it went to the sata mbr. Should I just install grub to the ide disk which will become my "sda" at boot? Will grub find ubuntu on the sata disk, which will become sdb?
I want to switch from Windows 7 (32-bit) to Ubuntu 10.10 (32-bit), but I can't install it on my PC for some reason. I've tried burning the .iso onto 2 or 3 different DVD+ROM discs now, I keep getting the following message when I try to install it.
Message: BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-1ubuntu5) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
(initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: Input/output error Can not mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs
Edit: I got it to work, I'm not sure if this actually made any difference, but I formatted my hard drive using my Windows 7 installation DVD before trying to install Ubuntu 10.10. But it worked fine after that and I'm now running it on my PC without any problems (at the moment).
I recently bought an asus eee-PC 900HD set up by its previous owner to to boot to either ubuntu 10.10 or windows xp.how can I get rid of xp and install vista in its place? As a side-note; the eee-PC has no optical drive. It has USB ports and an SD card reader. Is it possible to install windows through one of these? I do have an old laptop optical drive I've been meaning to house in a USB enclosure. Is the cd/dvd route my only option?
I installed Mythbuntu, got some Wine apps up and running, then discovered my Nvidia DualTV MCE won't work with Myth. So I'd like to try a different variant, either the plain vanilla Ubuntu or UbuntuStudio.Can I just use Mythbuntu to create a new partition, move /home/* to it, and then reformat and install over the original Mythbuntu partition? When I reinstall the new version, how do I tell the installation process to use /home on the other partition (without overwriting it) instead of creating a new one from scratch?
I thought it would be cool and easy to install Windows 7, ended up being a headache and worthless so far. Now I only have the windows bootloader with vista and windows 7 as options. How can I get grub going again? I have all 6 fedore core 10 cds and a live cd in case those will help, I am using the live cd to play in fedora right now, but I am not sure how to get access to grub.conf and what to change in it, because I am pretty sure I have to add Windows 7 to it.
I have tried (a few times now lol) to get this setup. I am using Windows 7 64-bit and Ubuntu 10.4 64-bit. I have Windows 7 installed on one hdd, another hdd has the System Reserved partition along with a data partition for files, the third hdd is the one where I want to install Ubuntu. I have found numerous tutorials on installing them both on the same drive, but not on separate ones. The couple I have found haven't really worked.
I think that Ubuntu is installed correctly but there is no option to boot into it. Windows 7 just happily loads itself. I have tried reinstalling and selecting 'sdc1' (the native ubuntu partition) as the location for the bootloader to be installed and then used Easy BCD to add that location to the windows bootloader which gives the option to load Ubuntu but when selected dies complaining that there is a missing file (I think it just can't find the Ubuntu bootloader).
As an aside when I get to the installation screen the Ubuntu installer keeps on telling me that there are no operating systems detected on the machine (Even though I'm pretty sure the drive it is talking about 'sda' is where Windows 7 is installed). Not sure if that matters just seemed a little wierd.
I had installed windows XP and then Ubuntu a few months ago. I was mostly using Ubuntu only. My Ubuntu is up to date. Windows XP got the blue screen and i had to re-install it. So, i used the Disk Utility and formatted my C-drive as NTFS with a boot flag.
After that, when i attempted to install windows XP on my C-Drive that i just formatted, Windows Setup is unable to recognize any drives! I really don`t want to uninstall Ubuntu or format my whole HDD, just to install windows XP. But i also want to install windows XP as i have to run some applications in it!.
I am trying to install ubuntu 10.10 and windows 7 on my hard drive. I want to install both the OS on seperate drives. can anyone tell how to do it? I know that there are screenshots on ubunutu site itself but i am new to ubuntu and I am unable to follow instructions.
I first installed ubuntu 10.10 in dec 2010 using my ubuntu dvd. Now I am reinstalling it again but the setup screens have changed? hows that possible? i mean its the same disk. does anyone know why? or am i drunk.
I prefer to do a clean install of each new version of Ubuntu.I do have a separate /home partition which I preserve during each new install. I also have many additional packages installed.My question is:How do I preserve the list of installed additional software so that I may readily reinstall all of it after each upgrade?
Months ago one of my computers died. I have bought a brand new one laptop, but I have a problem at the moment I wanted to install Ubuntu in dual boot with Windows 7: the new partition that windows 7 reserves for securing system files.
There are three partitions: Windows 7 principal, Windows 7 for securing system files (at the drive's beginning) and the recovery partition that HP puts there. Then I only have option to resize the Windows principal partition and get another principal partition. My question is if you know how to deal with this?
The other option you can help me is to advise me about some external hard drives to install ubuntu in them and don't touch the internal disk of my laptop.
I'm a n00b at dual booting and I plan on installing Ubuntu 10.04 on a separate hard drive than my Windows 7 64 bit one in a dual boot situation. I have read that you can do this by unplugging the Windows hard drive, install Ubuntu on the other one, and than plug the Windows hard drive back in and everything will be fine and dandy. Is this correct? If it is, will I have to manually set the Primary and Secondary drive (in the BIOS I think?), or will it automatically do that.
I have been messing around with the ubuntu family for some time now, and usually have no problem finding my answers. This one, however, is giving me some trouble. I have been using ubuntu on my laptop for some time now, and recently got a new 2TB hard drive for my desktop. I cloned the old hard drive to the new one, and decided to install ubuntu onto a third drive. The third drive was IDE, the new one is SATA. I disconnected the other hard drive, and so my current set up is a SATA drive with Windows 7, and an IDE drive with Ubuntu (11.04 of course)
Well, I am unable to dual boot between the two, unfortunately, and would like to figure out how. I would like to say the problem is with Windows, since that is the primary drive. No GRUB shows up upon booting when both drives are plugged in, and the Windows Bootloader does not show my installation of Ubuntu, instead it goes right to Windows.
I'm going to move from Linux Mint (Debian Edition) to Debian on my Laptop (3 user). The current setup is LMDE-Cinnamon, with 4 partitions; /, swap, home and data. All the important data lives in data while home is used for preferences only.
Am I right in thinking that preserving the data partition is as simple as not formatting it during the installation?
And what about home? Obviously this now contains a lot of irrelevant stuff (Cinnamon settings for example) and many programs will be in different versions... - Just keep it (after all the irrelevant stuff should not do anything bad?)? And if so how do I tell the installer to do this? - Format and restore the relevant preferences manually from the backup? - Format and have everybody set up their preferences as needed?
I have a Windows XP system, and wanted to install Ubuntu to a 100 GB XT3 partition on the same drive. I was told I could chainload Ubuntu from the NT Loader menu. I booted from a Ubuntu 10.04 CD and ran the installer. It didn't find any hard drives. On a hunch, I tried the 10.04 alternate installer CD. That DID find the hard drive and partitions. I had the installer make /dev/sda7 (the XT3 partition) the root. Installation proceeded smoothly, but then the installer told me it did not see any other OS's on my drive! Why? I directed the installer to place grub on /dev/sda7 instead of the MBR.
Per the instructions I was given, I used DD to copy the first 512 bytes of /dev/sda7 to the Windows primary partition (sda1) as bootloader.lnx. But the resulting file is empty, and it won't boot. I repeated the whole process - formatting, installing FOUR times, and same results. I have no idea where GRUB was installed. It is apparently not in the MBR, because I still have my normal Windows boot. I downloaded the 10.10 alternate installer and got the same exact results. Even switched from XT3 to XT4. After two weeks of this nonsense, I still have yet to see Linux boot.
i have recently setup and installed Ubuntu 9.04 on a virtulal drive usingVMWare 6.04, installed the desktop gui as well, I need to add other drives for data and loggng, which I did in the VMWare side. I can see the 2 drives in ubuntu, but can not access them, I get he unable to mount location when I try. How can resolve this please as I need these to virtual drives to be used as data drives.
I am new to Linux and was wondering how to make dual booting Windows and Ubuntu from 2 separate drives work. I have dual booted from the same drive but never different ones. If I install Ubuntu on the second drive how will I configure the system to let me choose on start up?
When I try to save a new or edited file via OO I get the following error
Error savind the document doc: /c/windows/doc.odt does not exist
I assume that it is a mounting error but due to my newbieness dont know how to confirm this. I see that I can not copy to the windows drives via Dolphin either.
I want to switch from Windows 7 (32-bit) to Ubuntu 10.10 (32-bit), but I can't install it on my PC for some reason. I've tried burning the .iso onto 2 or 3 different DVD+ROM discs now, I keep getting the following message when I try to install it.
Message: BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-1ubuntu5) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. (initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: Input/output error Can not mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs
Edit: I got it to work, I'm not sure if this actually made any difference, but I formatted my hard drive using my Windows 7 installation DVD before trying to install Ubuntu 10.10. But it worked fine after that and I'm now running it on my PC without any problems (at the moment).
I have recently set up an ubuntu installation on an old PC. After some fiddling with both it, and the windows 7 machine, I have managed to share all of my drives. However, when attempting to access them from ubuntu, only 2 of the 4 hard disk shares will mount, with the other 2 failing with a Unable to mount location, failed to mount windows share error message.
I am using Wine to play Sim City 2k, and the game doesn't show up in the taskbar. Conky shows that SimCity.exe and winserver are both running, but I can't get to them. How can I use the Terminal to swap windows?
EDIT: Oh, great. I think a fire just broke out. I can hear the sirens, but I can't stop them! Crap!
EDIT2: You know, listening to these sirens really sucks. I had my city up to 130,000 people. I was just saving up enough money to buy an arcology when I tried to move SimCity to Desktop #2. Wine was not happy with this decision. My city is probably burned to the ground by now.
EDIT3: Ok, I just realised that I can stop the process from the System Monitor. Too little, too late I imagine. Oh well, I can probably rebuild it if I could just get to the window...
I installed Ubuntu 10.10 over Windows 7, getting rid of Win7. I have decided that I want to switch back to Windows 7, because of more compatibility. Windows 7 came pre-installed on my laptop. Is there any way I can recover it? I did a full install of Ubuntu 10.10.
I have my current computer set up with 2 HDDs in it. A 500GB with GRUB and Windows 7 on it and a 160GB HDD with Ubuntu on it.
I would like to someone replace Windows 7 with Ubuntu on the 500GB drive, but I'm not sure how I would be able to do this and still keep GRUB and such .
EDIT: I'd like to do this without re-installing anything.
i have Ubuntu 10.10 + Compiz, everything seems okay; but when i want to switch between open windows i have to click only on windows Caption Bar, Clicking on Form body dont bring that form to front
I somehow managed to screw up my 'switch between windows shortcut' when changing the settings for compiz. Now I cannot get it to work at all, despite trying to solutions on this and other forums. I removed compiz with the software center and my alt-tab shortcut still didn't work--although it IS enabled and set correctly in the System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts menu. I reset the alt-tab combo so something else (alt-space, which works for its normal setting of bringing down the window's dropdown menu) but it still did not work to switch between windows.
I recently installed Ubuntu desktop, since I had been running my server as Ubuntu Server on a guest OS on Windows 7 and never really used the Windows part of the computer. Since then, I've been unable to use the mouse in a graphical environment for longer than a few minutes without it starting to act crazy. The mouse moves around normally, but won't respond to clicks (left, middle, or right) but the keyboard shortcuts still work. I'm not sure if things have changed since I last used Gnome though, but Alt+Tab is not working for me either when this happens. Sometimes, the active window is even behind another window, and isn't pulled to the foreground.
After a bit of frustrated clicking and jamming of buttons on the keyboard, sometimes the mouse kind of starts working because I'll notice a right click menu open. But, I am still unable to move windows or click on them to bring them to the foreground, and my mouse presses only work on the current window. And then, eventually, after about a minute or so, it'll stop respond again too.
I saw in one thread that someone had dead spaces where he couldn't click, so he installed and ran Gnome and that fixed it, but I tried using Ubuntu Classic and it is still giving me the same behavior. I'm actually posting this message now in links, because I can't use Firefox or Chrome well enough when it's hidden behind other windows.
