Ubuntu Installation :: Using GRUB To Boot WinXP On A Separate HD
Jan 6, 2010
I have been a happy little GRUB user for a while now, but now I want to use GRUB to boot a physically separate WinXP hard drive, and I can't seem to do that. Normally GRUB is easy, (I even have a nice splash screen of my own making). Its a champion solution for booting into Ubuntu Linux on /dev/sda5 or Win XP on /dev/sda1.
My second HD which Linux recognizes as /dev/sdb, has a Win XP boot sector and Win XP in one partition.
Normally I boot off /dev/sda using GRUB, and from Linux I can mount and have access to /dev/sdb - that works well. Occasionally however, I need to boot the separate Win XP system on the second HD, and to do that I switch the boot drive in the BIOS, but lately that is getting to be a bit tedious.
Initially I though to give the additional boot choice to GRUB, I simply had to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and point to the second HD (where /dev/sdb = hd1 in GRUB speak). Unfortunately, when I select the new choice, it simply boots Win XP off the first HD.
I'm confident GRUB does look at the first partion on hd1 as expected as I can induce an error by having hd1 disconnected, or write silly partion numbers into menu.lst. So if it does in fact find the first partion on hd1, why doesn't it boot? Why does it default to WinXP on hd0?
I have diligently tried physically swapping SATA drive cables and playing with bios switching and have messed about a fair bit with menu.lst to make sure I have drive and partition numbers right, but all to no avail. I have also tried changing rdisk(0) in boot.ini to rdisk(1) on the second drive when it is not the boot drive.
I'm afraid the only other thing I can think of is that the second hard drive requires a Linux boot sector if I am going to boot it up from GRUB, but somehow that doesn't make sense. Surely GRUB can work across physically separate drives, so I'm open to other ideas first.
I've got an old Dell Precision 670 which has a SCSI disk. I installed 10.04 and everything worked fine - I could boot into 10.04 from the GRUB menu. I later added an IDE disk and installed WinXP Pro on it.
When I ran 'sudo update-grub', Lucid discovered the IDE disk and added a WinXP Pro entry to the GRUB menu. Now, though I can still boot 10.04 from the GRUB menu, I can't boot WinXP - the screen goes blank, and I have to hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart.
For what it's worth, here are the results of using boot_info_script055.sh:
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb and looks on the same drive in partition #1 for /boot/grub.
I just installed Ubuntu Remix 10.04 on my wifes MSI U100 netbook. I did a dual boot just in case she had to get into Windows for something. I let the install automatically partion (did the side by side option). Anyway, Ubuntu works fine and imported all her documents and stuff. Problem is Windows XP won't boot. The first time I tried to boot Windows XP I got a message saying the hardware had changed and I had to select safe mode, normal boot, last known good, etc... I booted normally. I got the splash screen followed by a quick flash of BSOD and a reboot. I does this no matter how I try to boot Windows (safe, command prompt, etc). Anyone have any idea what the problem is?
While installing with a separate /boot partition I cannot get two distinct copies of ubu installed on one machine and be able to choose between them. Each is installed on a different hard drive. x64 versions. I've had this issue both ways:
Stepsinstall mythbuntu install ubuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause ubuntu to boot
Stepsinstall ubuntu install mythbuntu Result
Two entries in grub. Both cause mythbuntu to boot Grub 2 is so unfriendly for fixing these things. I don't know where to make changes. Ok, Grub 2 is very powerful, maybe it's the lagging documentation, or lack of tutorials that is the problem. But I don't know how to fix this. Do I start over without the /boot partition? Do I bail on ubu?
I have an HP Pavilion m7480n PC with Windows XP installed on the C-drive. I successfully installed FC 12 onto the spare USB drive. When I rebooted the PC all I got was a blinking underscore at the extreme upper left position of a totally black screen. After a bit of experimenting I found that if I hit the F1 key during the boot process, go into the BIOS setup, do nothing within the setup, and press ESC to get out of the setup then the PC will go back into the boot cycle a second time. During the second time however a small text message appears with words to the effect "Press any key to enter GRUB..." after which the GRUB splash screen comes up with the choice for FC 12 or "Other" (referring to Win XP). At that point I can boot into either one.
Noobish question on multibooting multiple Linux distros. I have four of the current major Linux distributions. Each has been installed and run individually (no other Linux distribution installed) in a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. No problem.
What I want to do is install all four Linux distributions and multiboot them. Reading the internet it would seem this is a simple task with GRUB. The short version being - install a Linux distro with a separate /boot partition for GRUB and use GRUB to boot the other Linux distros from the GRUB boot menu.
So I installed one of the Linux distros with a separate partition for /boot. The distro installer installed GRUB in /boot and correctly setup a dual-boot configuration with Windoze. GRUB was installed to the MBR. Next I installed a second Linux distro in its own root partition and told the distros installer NOT to install GRUB to the MBR, but rather, to the boot sector of the root partion of the second Linux distro. Installation was uneventful (and I could access the second Linux partition from the first installed Linux distro, things looked ok). Then I added to following to the installed (MBR - /boot) GRUB's menu.lst:
Code: title lixux distro 2 root (hd0,7)
chainloader +1 After which I rebooted the system and the new entry for the second Linux distro now appears in the GRUB boot menu. I selected the second Linux distro from the boot menu and got the following GRUB error: Error 5 : Partition table invalid or corrupt [Code]....
I have Win7 installed in my notebook, after I install WinXP, after I install Ubuntu 10.10
I need WinXP to my project...
I re-install Grub2 with live CD and the WinXP doesn't show up...
So I re-install WinXP... Re-install Grub2 and WinXP doesn't show up again...
So I custumise Grub2 and I put one line for WinXP (doesn't work)
But Now, Win7 line in Grub2 boot WinXP
Code: Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #6 for (,msdos6)/boot/grub.
I've been trying to setup some installation partitions made with Debian and Windows Installation CDs/Images and everything works well with the Debian, but not Windows. This is a similar setup as some Laptop companies do by putting a hidden "recovery" partition.How do I get grub to boot say WinXp/Win9x or what have you?Is there a better alternative?
Here's today's problem: I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 and hope to have it run alongside Win XP PRO, which it had for months.
Only, when I select WinXP in GRUB, nothing happens. Oh the screen goes dark for a few seconds, but then the GRUB screen reappears. Ubuntu 10.04 functions correctly.
here are the contents of what I assume is grub.cfg code...
What I need to know is how to make GRUB load WinXP.
early tl;dr: The fancy grub breaks on my wubi 10.04 install, can I force it to use the old grub?
When I rebuild grub.cfg (last time was yesterday for kernel update to .37), and shut down / reboot, grub breaks because it can't 'loadfont' and a few other errors which are related to the 'graphical' grub boot menu.
To fix this I have to boot into a live CD (also Ubuntu 10.04) and run the following: Taken from [URL]
Code: sudo fdisk -l sudo mkdir /win sudo mount /dev/sda1 /win sudo mkdir /vdisk sudo mount -o loop /win/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /vdisk
[Code]....
I know how to fix it but is there a way to skip having to do this on upgrades (If I edit the grub.cfg before shutting down then this doesn't happen, obviously, but sometimes I forget and this is the result. I'd rather stop the problem at it's source than fight against the updater).
Where can I install grub? I know it can be installed to the mbr of a hard drive. I also know it can be installed to a /boot partition. Can I install it to a lvm partition? Does it have to be /boot? grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda Does this command install grub to a partition and link it to a separate /boot? I have fedora, but this is a live cd. I need to learn where I can install grub2 to boot
I have PC with following specs: Intel E7500 CPU / Intel G31 Motherboard Kingston 800MHz 2GB RAM Hitachi 500 GB SATA HDD + Seagate 160 GB SATA HDD
I initially had only 500 GB HDD. I installed two installations of Windows 7 Ultimate - one 32-bit and one 64-bit installations. Both working fine.
Later on I installed the 160 GB HDD and installed Fedora 13 in it in a partition. The rest space of the 160GB I am using with Windows for storing data.
Now, the boot entries of both Windows installations are in the Grub Loader of F13. Means, if I remove the 160GB HDD, I cannot boot into my Windows installations.
Now I want to remove the 160 GB HDD and install a new 2TB hard-drive. That way, I cannot log into my Windows. And I do not want to lose the Linux installation also.
How can I remove the 160 GB HDD and install a new one without sacrificing my Windows installations?
OR...Is it possible that I can copy complete image of F13 on to the new HDD, so that things are same for the Windows installations?
I am helping my pal to get into Debian (yes first timer).He is running W7 on a 500G SATA HDD and he has another 250G SATA HDD that he wants Debian to go to.Will Debian install grub on the master bootloader even if the installation is going on a separate hard drive?I have dual boot before but on the same hard drive.
I'd like to install Lucid on a spare hard drive I have, so I can do my bit for testing it. I have a feeling that if I just burn the latest alpha .iso and install from that, it will replace my current GRUB, whereas I would prefer to simply add the Lucid install as an option in my current GRUB.
Of course I might be wrong, I just wanted to check before I went ahead with it. I was unable to find the info I needed via searching.
Added an SSD (dev/sdc) and decided to move some less often changed directories there. Started with /usr and /boot, leaving / on a primary in the first drive, for now. All started ok, and my changed fstab mounted the right ones, and the system works.
However, grub is actually using the original /boot on / on sda1. I cannot see any way to change this. (Which makes it sorta hard to update the kernel
From grub:
Okay, since it has two choices, I tried to tell it which one to use. But, grub> root (hd2,5) does nothing.
Disk /dev/sda:
what I seem to recall, grub doesn't care about the boot flag on the disk. Nor does it care about primary vs. logical (except GNU doc says "makeactive" only works on a primary?).
The GNU doc also indicates that it looks for a directory /boot on the partition, so if you're mounting a partition as /boot, it also needs to contain a /boot directory under it. Tried that, but no change.
Is my problem the logical partition? Does that prevent "grub> root" from changing it? I'm afraid to wipe out the old /boot and find that I can't start up.
I have winxp and ubuntu 10.04 dualboot. They were working ok. Today I removed old *21 kernel image and headers so grub updated the confs. That's all I did that could cause the win no longer boot. It starts booting, the screen goes black and the PC reboots. I tried safe mode, it started to load some dlls as it usually shows in safe mode but then still reboot.
Code: $ sudo fdisk -l Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
I originally wanted to dual install 10.10 64 Ubuntu with Windows 7 64 RAID 1 HP PC, but RAID got corrupted and I could find no fix online except using fakeraid unsupported software. The whole thing blew my muind. I gave up after 4 or so reinstalls of windows 7 to fix RAID. So I decided to install a dual boot 10.10 Ubuntu i86 with my old WinXP i86. I kept getting these errors at boot up: unknown filesystem, file not found, out of disk, no such partion and so on. I tried just about every grub reinstall I could find, including article here: "Recovering Ubuntu after Installing Windows."
After a number of tries my friend installed Ubuntu successfully, but then when I installed windows xp I am stuck here, again. I did do the Reload grub tutorials again as well. I may just give up on WinXP and have my friend reinstall Ubuntu for me.
I have some proprietory softwares installed on WinXP so it is very important for my work that it is up and running.
I performed a FULL INSTALL from the Live-CD (10.10) and installed grub on the windows partition. Now whenever I try to select the Windows option in the Grub menu, the screen goes blank and it gets me back to the Grub menu.
WinXP Partition loading as a read only and can't fix it with PYSDM (storage device manager) Let me provide some history as to how everything was installed: From my old WIN XP hard drive I used clonezilla to clone the drive to a partition on my new hard drive for Linux. Windows is on SDA4 which is the last partition of the drive, it is mounted at sda4/windows using ntfs. I then loaded Mint 8 gnome on the 2nd partition sda2 using ext3 mounted at /, sda1 is my Linux swap, and sda3 is mounted at /home using ext3. While installing I selected to mount Linux ext3 at /
When I choose to load winXP from the grub boot loader I get dev/sda4 no such device 10CDR36778638F73. Also when I try to unmount from disk utility I get the following error: Error unmounting: umount exited with exit code 1: helper failed with: umount: only root can unmount UUID=10CDF36778638F73 from /windows Seemslike I need to rename the drive but it won't let me in disk utility.
My Problem is that within PYSDM (storage device manager) I uncheck Mount file system (sda4/windows) as a read only but it will not stay unchecked. I have unchecked it hit unmount and mount and it still is checked to mount as a read only. This is the code in options for sda4 in PYSDM (storage device manager) nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46
I've just had to reinstall WinXP on a Dell Inspiron 1501. An ideal opportunity to try out Ubuntu. First I tried a WinXP/Hardy Heron dual boot - all seems okay. Next WinXP/Karmic dual boot - all seems okay. Then, why not, WinXP/Hardy/Karmic triple boot - all seems okay. Playing with each OS I noticed that Hardy had a couple of update notifications. So I opened Update Manager, went on-line, hit [Check] and was informed that there were 200+ Important Security Updates - I installed these. Better check Karmic too - similar story, installed 200+ updates. Everything still seems okay in WinXP, Hardy and Karmic. However, I've just noticed that the Grub2 boot menu now displays eight "Ubuntu" lines, as opposed to the four lines I had originally
Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-19-generic Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-19-generic (recovery mode) Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-14-generic Ubuntu, Linux 2.6.31-14-generic (recovery mode)...
I tried to help my friend install Ubuntu 10.04 side-by-side with Windows XP on his Acer Aspire One netbook.Unfortunately, the installation process came to a standstill and it quit due to "unexpected errors". The second time I started the installation, I realized that the option for installing side by side was gone and that I could not mount the C: partition on Ubuntu. The error message is listed below:====================BEGIN ERROR MESSAGE======================Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 12: Failed to read last sector (299982847): Invalid argument
HINTS: Either the volume is a RAID/LDM but it wasn't setup yet, or it was not setup correctly (e.g. by not using mdadm --build ...), or a wrong device is tried to be mounted,
I have 2 sata HDD, I wish to dual boot, but in a way to have Windows on one and Ubuntu on the other.
For some reason I could not get Ubuntu (10.04) to install from the live CD or Wubi or from Windows on the same HDD.
I downloaded the advanced distro and went with that straight onto the HDD and it has been a gem (love how it just works with no drama).
I want to install windows XP again on the 2nd HDD, as there is one game that I play in windows. (I've got it to work in Wine I just don't like / can't get used to it)
My Question is: installing windows on a 2nd HDD and then being able to choose which one to boot.
I've read about installing Windows after Linux in the user guide and reinstalling grub2 - I got the impression though, the they were installed on the same HDD and thought that what I want to achieve may differ?
Basically, as the topic reads, I normally run Windows XP, and installed Ubuntu on a new HDD this week (Karmic). However, realising later that there was a new release, I just upgraded through the network, completely ignorant of their being anything wrong with this (Windows drive still being connected at this time). Now Ubuntu boots fine, but when I select Windows through the GRUB set-up, it just displays a black screen with the '_' cursor blinking and goes no further.
I have absolutely no clue how to fix this, reading through various forum posts and messing with the boot command (or whatever you call it when you push 'e' at the GRUB screen) all day to no avail. One of the things I've download was the Boot_Info_Script, so hopefully someone out there can gleam some information on how the heck I can solve this issue and boot XP once again (hopefully without having to just blow away one or both of the OS's and doing a completely clean install). If there's anything I can do to provide any further required information, My RESULTS.txt:
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.
To do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.
However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press enter" or something similar.
I have Ubuntu 11.04 on 1TB HDD and Win 7 on another 1TB HDD. Right now I have to unplug a SATA cable to get to boot into one or the other. What is the best way to be able to pick. I don't care which OS I do it in or which is the primary, if there has to be one. I have an MSI mobo.
I have a 320gb USB hard drive, one partition for my files, one for playing Wii games, and one which I would like to use for an Ubuntu instillation.o do this, I partitioned my disk accordingly using Windows, then booted from the Ubuntu CD to install the OS to my external hard drive partition. It asked me where I wanted to install the boot loader, so I selected the hard drive itself, rather than the specific partition, reasoning that it would scan the hard drive for a boot record.However, when I booted it (with USB boot selected) it simply said "No Operating System found, replace system disk and press en
Trying to dual-boot OpenSolaris and FC10 is difficult because Solaris grub doesn't know about ext3 and Fedora grub doesn't know about ZFS. I was able to rescue my FC10 installation by creating a new FAT16 partition and restoring /boot to it from a dump, and then doing a grub setup to it. A complication is that anaconda doesn't seem to be able to find /dev/md0 (both the Solaris and FC10 installs use mirrored disks).
This process moved the FC10 ext3 partition from /dev/sda3 to /dev/sda4, but the other half of the mirror is still /dev/sdb3.
When I boot FC10 I get a "can't load image" error from grub, but it still loads FC10 successfully. It makes no difference if menu.1st/grub.conf has "root (hd0,1)" (the FAT16 partition) or "root (hd0,3)" (the FC10 ext3 partition).
If a future yum update were to try to install a new kernel, my FAT16 partition would not be updated. It seems to me both these problems might be solved if I could move /boot from /dev/md0 to /dev/sda2 (/dev/sda2 is the FAT16 partition).
Rather than go through yet another install, would the following work?
from FC10, move /boot to (say) /boot.0 mkdir /boot edit fstab to include "mount /dev/sda2 /boot"
If I try this and it doesn't work, I can't see any way to undo it since anaconda doesn't seem to be able to mount /dev/md0. If a grub guru sees this, perhaps they could suggest a better alternative, or if not, whether this will work or not.
Additionally, although there are two alternatives in menu.1st/grub.conf, grub doesn't display a menu - it goes directly to boot. Any idea why? I suppose this might be a Solaris stage1 grub problem...
Since FAT16 doesn't support links, it isn't possible to link grub.conf to menu.1st. Are they both required?
Everything works fine, the setup went very well. But I got to thinking (A dangerous thing for me). In Ubuntu I am using separate partitions for / (root) and /home. I was wondering, during install of Fedora, could I use the separate partition I am using now for both root and /home for just / (root) and use the Ubuntu /home partition for Fedora (set the mount point for /home to the same partition as I did for Ubuntu and not format the drive)? This would allow me to seamlessly use the /home partition and not require duplication of files. I can mount the Ubuntu /home dir while in Fedora.I can share the /home partition with two different installs of Ubuntu (been there).
I would like to have 1 hard drive operate with Ubuntu 10.04 and another with Windows 7 Pro, with a proper boot selection menu when I boot up my computer.
I have Windows 7 x64 on a RAID0 Setup and have a separate 120GB Hard Drive and want to DualBoot with Ubuntu! How do I go by doing that seeing that LiveCD is not detecting Windows 7 Loader? Twitpic : [URL]
