Ubuntu :: Vista Not Booting Without External HDD Plugged In
Jun 6, 2010
I been meaning to install some linux distro on my external hdd to enjoy the renowned desktop experience, so far I installed sabayon first but it wasn't working very sharply and a friend of mine recommended me to just install ubuntu. Anyhow, since the first time I installed sabayon I could not boot vista when the external HDD is not plugged in. I get a grub rescue command prompt. I don't have a vista cd because my laptop came with the whole recovery function installed on a vista partition. I can boot that from the grub menu, from there I did a boot system restore, but I still get the same error. I'd like to be able to boot vista without having the external HDD on of course.
I am trying to boot up Vista Home Premium from USB since my internal (bootable) CD-RW drive has failed and I cannot boot up Vista from CD.
I have Ubuntu running in the Windows partition and all my windows files are in there so I don't want to do a full installation of Ubuntu (yet).
I formatted an 8GB USB stick into two partitions
I then copied over to /dev/sdb1 all files from a Vista CD using an external CD-RW drive (which is not recognised as bootable on USB port).
In my Dell BIOS settings I changed the boot sequence to be bootable from USB disk first.
then I tried to reboot Vista installation in the USB stick.
But I get this message ..."this is not a bootable disk .. insert a bootable floppy"
So I could not boot up the Vista installation files.
When the boot flag is "on" in a GParted created partition does this make the partition DOS bootable for Vista installation?
My question is - What utility in Ubuntu 10.10 can create a DOS bootable partition on a USB stick? It seems that the MBR might have been overwritten when I installed Grub 2.0.
I can Grub dual boot between Windows and Ubuntu but I can't get very far with Windows .. stalls in safe mode.
So a Vista repair is called for. I would prefer not to reinstall Vista afresh at this stage.
There is a thread here explaining how to repair Vista bootloader
[url]
But it assumes that I am able to boot from CD-RW drive.
i have recently started my masters degree program and i have to install fedora 11 for one of my courses. The problem is when i try to install fedora 11 on my laptop, it wipes out my windows vista installation. I want to keep vista. I have a sony vaio laptop model VGN-FW340D. 4GB RAM and 400 GB HD. i first shrink my hard drive to free up around 100 GB. Then i run fedora 11 DVD and let it make the partitions on my free space.. I have tried everything.. I chose use free space the first time, but i didnt work, it wiped out my vista, next time i chose custom layout and defined boot, root and swap partitions , but again it wiped out my vista.. I have read many guides to dual boot vista and fedora and have carried them out step by step, but nothing works.... Also i dont have vista installation DVD, i just have the recovery CDs, so everytime it wipes out my vista, i have to do system recovery, ive been trying for a week now, and its driving me crazy, i asked a friend of mine to help me out, he has dual boot system, and he tried it and it did the same thing, wiped out my vista... i just have one drive C: with two partitions, one small partitions which contains recovery files, and the rest of the partition has vista.......
i decided to install ubuntu in my PC,i downloaded the .ISO image and i installed it in my USB. After trying it and all that i observed that i really liked it and i decided to formally install it to my computer in the hard drive. When i reached the partition thing,i selected to dual boot with Vista and select between each them in every startup,when i clicked FORWARD it gave me an error which i did not read(because,again im a noob) so i clicked cancel.
Today i wanted to go through the process again and now really install it,so again i went to the time zone part and i clicked forward but then,instead of taking me straight to the partition phase,it appeard a window saying "The installer has detected that the following disks have mounted partitions: /dev/sda ...." I clicked yes,to unmount this partitions so it took me to the partition thing,once there i selected the option to install Ubuntu with Vista and select between them i neach startup,then i clicked forward and went to the username/computer name process,once i finished i continued to the next part,the installation,but i selected to import all of my WIndows VIsta default user data,after that i clicked forward and went to the installation process,i went down stairs to eat soemthing while it finishes,i came back and it was finished,it asked me to reboot so i clicked in Restart Now.
When it tried to boot,appeared an error saying: Error: no such devide found: #################### Grub load(or something like that) grub rescue: and it was a command line,since there i havent been able to boot into vista or Ubuntu,im really scared because is the first thing related to OS installing ive done,so i booted my USB and ran the trial and right now im trying to find out what to do from that trial version. I just went to the INSTALL UBUNTU 10.04 LTS application under the System>Administration Menu and found out that in the partition phase the Install and allow to select between both systems in eahc startup option,i dont know what to do,i foudn out that my HD has still all its data(MUsic/Videos/Folders/Programs/ect.)its just that i cannot boot from it. Also in GParted it appears as /dev/sda1/ and a warning icon besides it,also when i go into information, thers this warning there [URL]
whenever Ubuntu boots, it searches for an external hard drive that I no longer have plugged in. It hangs on the Ubuntu load screen for a while, then says that it cannot find the drive and I have to press (S) to skip the attempt.
I have an Asus eee901 netbook and it's got an Intel 945 graphics card. If I boot it up, log in, attach an external monitor and then open the Display Settings dialog the screen goes black and the laptop appears to crash. Leaving it for a minute or two does nothing.
However, if I boot up with the external monitor attached then I can open the Display Settings dialog and configure both screens.
This is quite annoying as I've got to reboot if I want to connect an external monitor.
Additionally, if booted with the monitor attached and I choose a configuration where the width of the combined screens is greater than 2048, the screens go black and the same lock up appears to occur. Could it be that the Display Settings dialog isn't checking for the maximum display width the driver supports and is then crashing in both scenarios?
I have installed ubuntu 10.10 on and external usb drive and now my computer which runs XP will not boot unless the external drive is connected and on. Can I by pass this situation or do I have to uninstall ubuntu altogether and start over?
This sounds strange, but my laptop (running 11.2) won't boot correctly unless my external HDD (ext3) is on and plugged in. If I don't turn it on, it hangs at the start of udev. If I press ctrl+c, the system continues to boot, but the keyboard and mouse don't activate... don't function, etc. But I can press my power button and it does shut down. Going through dmesg (during a successful boot with the external HDD on), I saw this (not sure if it is relevant):
Code: [2.201029] scsi 2:0:0:0: Direct-Access Ext Hard Disk PQ: 0 ANSI: 4 [2.201450] usb-storage: device scan complete [2.206637] sd 2:0:0:0: [sdb] Spinning up disk...... [6.062434] udev: starting version 146 [6.225262] . The device sdb1 is the HDD.
Now, I don't know much about udev. I can tell you that I have no sdb1 lines in /etc/fstab, and I have no autofs references to it.
My computer runs Karmic and has quit booting when it is plugged in. I was told it was the AMP needing updated. How do I do that? I do the updates from the update manager, does this mean I missed the AMP update or is it done differently than through the update manager.
I finally got my new internal hdd for my laptop. I plugged it in and installed windows 7 64 bit. Then I partitioned my external hdd (WD mybook 640gb), and installed ubuntu 9.1 on a 200gb partition of it. The problem is that I didn't unplug the internal hdd before I installed ubuntu. Now the computer will not start unless I have the external hard drive plugged in.
So what should I do so that I will be able to go into windows 7 normally if the external hdd is unplugged? I would also like to be able to use ubuntu when I plug in the external hdd. I wouldn't mind having to go to the boot menu and choosing the external hard drive every time I wanted to use ubuntu.
The reason I partitioned the external hard drive was because it has a lot more space than my 250gb internal hdd, and I also wanted to leave space open to use as was intended, to back up stuff.
However, now that I think about it, I wouldn't mind partitioning the internal hdd and just leaving the external blank (which I should have done in the first place).
Because a lot of users are using laptops now, and many want externals hard drives for backups, is there a program in Ubuntu (cross-platform with Windows would be nice) that backs up files to an external hard drive when the external drive is plugged in or on a timely basis? All backup systems seem to have a timed system, but these systems have annoying pop ups if your backup location is non-existant (e.g. Deja Dup).
Use case 1: I plug in my external, the program recognizes that and starts a backup.
Use case 2: I leave my external in all day and every 6 hours, my laptop backs up my files to it.
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.
I had this corrupted external hdd and so I formatted the main partition on it on windows but messed up in the formatting and ended up having to format the entire thing. I got some weird message about it not being initialized (no not mounted) so I was in compmgmt.msc in windows and right clicked it in device manager and it asked for master boot or GUID I selected the latter and formatted. Worked fine and all for a bit but now it doesn't show up as a drive. I noticed when using compmgmt.msc it showed up that it had installed driver software and was being recognized but in the partition editing area there was nothing on this drive, reinstalling driver software doesn't seem to help. Also GParted wont load up when I have it plugged in and Disk Utility doesn't show it. I am requesting help to fix this problem within Ubuntu 10.10 somehow so I can use it properly.
i installed ubuntu 9.10.. i remember splitting my HD into 125gb/125gb and i installed ubuntu 9.10 on one of them.. worked awesome. now i wanted to play some games so i wanted a dual boot system.. i have a windows vista ultimate CD and i installed it on the other 125gb. installation went fine now when i boot it always goes into vista. how can i enable dual booting with vista?
I got this laptop today and decided to dual boot Linux, as I've been using it for a bit on an older laptop. I downloaded and installed Ubunutu 10.04, using the first install option to have it install next to Windows, and afterwards on startup I get 6 options: Whenever I try to boot with either of the Windows options, it goes to the Windows loading bar, then the screen goes black and the computer resets. I didn't make recovery disks. I already had Vista recovery disks and I did try that, but it said I wouldn't be able to restore the system with them. F11 on startup splashscreen does nothing.
when I select Vista/Longhorn from my grub list, it shows a black screen, then shows GRUB again. I recently had to reset my menu.lst, so I'm not sure if the settings for the windows option are correct. This is my /boot/grub/menu.lst:
My laptop had Vista, I installed Lucid so I'm dualbooting with GRUB, and I'm wondering if anybody knows of a way to triple-boot with Mac OSX. Thanks in advance.
I have to test Ubuntu 11.04 across multiple systems in my company and enable dual booting with Windows Vista PE x86. On selecting the Windows GRUB entry, the Grub menu just loads again without loading Vista and thus enters into an infinite loop.
Fdisk -l gives me:
Code:
When I did a update-grub, the output shows that it detected and added a Windows Vista OS. Also, I went ahead and added "MyWindows" as an option as well which has (worked for all other versions)
Code:
Selecting either of the GRUB Windows entries just loads GRUB menu again. I'm very confused and this deployment is critical for my company.
yesterday i was interested in Ubuntu,so i got the Lice CD and tried it out for a bit, seemed really cool and i decided to install it! So i partition during the installation setup (Yes i defragged on Vista really well before that), and it loaded all the stuffs. So at the Grub screen i chose vista, let it understand the partition changes, and let it finish all of that. Then i went onto Ubuntu, almost to the interesting part, So i tried to update, that worked, then it said to restart, so i restarted it and it said some line like:
*Shutting down now (not exact) In the white text on the black screen and it just sat there. So i Ctrl+Alt+Del it and it ran the Grub again, i went back into Ubuntu and tried to install my driver for my Graphics card (nVidia GeForce GT 130M w/1gb of vram)and it said it didnt come up with anything. So i decided to get rid of ubuntu cause i didnt know how it worked and because i fugured something was wrong or my computer couldnt function properly, or that i did something... Well anyways, so i go into Vista and knock out Ubuntus Partition.
So i restart Vista so it can recognise the changes in Partitions, and it gives me Grub Error 22! So i put the Live CD in and partition the drive and iand install Ubuntu again after trying to use Acers Recovery Disks that i made when i first got the computer (Thursday, and no they arent vista disks, there Acer Recov Disks) And it seemed to work fine, so im al ok. I workked on vista for awhile getting back my wiped Hdd, and i go to Ubuntu after to work on it.
it wont go into Grub, just boots to Vista, so once again i put in the Live CD and click install, and nitice that Ubuntus P:artition is Corrupted! So i delete the partition from Live CD and reinstal once again. now i did the Graphics card and updates on Ubuntu again and now i have mre errors then ever. Whenever i start up Ubuntu i get six mini screens on the screen and it gives me that line of words when i try and shut down/restart. It also wont let me change the Visual effects. Ubuntu seems like a pain in the butt right now, and unless theres any hopw of sucessfully dual booting then i wanna know how to get it off. I dont understand how linux works at all, and i feel much more comfortable using Vista, although Ubuntu may be cool n all.
My windows vista stopped booting so I had re-install vista. Now that I have done that Vista automatically boots every time I turn on my computer. I can still see that the Linux partition is there but I do not know how to boot it.
I have a Dell Studio laptop, which I am trying to make dual boot and in big trouble. These are the steps I completed.
1. Backedup all my important data on a USB drive. 2. Prepared a Ubuntu LiveUSB and booted in Ubuntu. 3. Used GParted tool to repartition my hard drive (320GB) as follows,
4. Accepted all these changes in GParted and restarted the machine. 5. Used VISTA installation disk to start VISTA installation on 1st NTFS partition (Partition 1).
-Everything was fine until now -
6. The VISTA installer took a really long time (around half hour) just showing copying files with 0% completion status message. 7. Somehow I got impatient and tried to cancel the installation.
Now, the problem is the system does not boot up even with my USB LiveCD or Windows VISTA installer. It just shows blank screen and nothing appears.
Well, the title pretty much sums it up. Whenever i plug in my external speakers, my laptop speakers continue to put out sound, which is good until i turn up the volume and hear rattling.
I am running ubuntu 9.04 64-bit 2.6.28-13 on an MSi GX620.
I am severely confused when it comes to partitioning. I have Fedora 11 on a liveCD now. I first tried to install that on to my Acer Aspire 1 netbook alongside another distro, but that failed due to my lack of partitioning knowledge. (It needed a /root device to install in I think).
Well, I would LOVE to have Fedora 11 with Vista (on my main laptop rig - acer aspire 7520) when I go back to college next week (go hokies). But I need Vista for work with my lab applications that uses windows. Can someone please provide me a noob-proof method to install Fedora without corrupting Vista? I really need Vista, but I really enjoy linux.
What I'm running: Acer 4810t intel centrino dual core 1.40 4 gb ram 320 HD Vista home premium 64 bit
1. what do I need to do this I have a program to make a new partition already what I need is to know what is the best boot selector to use I'm thinking of buying VistaBootPro will that work well?
I'm trying to find a simple solution to dual-boot Fedora 11 onto Vista Home Basic Edition, using the live disk as the installation media, but I can't find one anywhere. Maybe you could point me in the right direction... (But first let me explain that I am a newbie when it comes to Linux.)
So, my computer specs are... Make/Model: Dell Inspiron 1525 Processor: Pentium Dual-Core CPU T4200
My cousin just deleted his Linux partition and another smaller partitio nand now Windows is not booting, no he does not have the recovery disc. When Windows tries to boot it goes to "GRUB" and says "partition not loaded". What are some GRUB commands? And is it possible to fix this without using the recovery CD?
I have an HP Pavilion that was/still is running Vista. I recently decided to dual-boot to Ubuntu from an external hard drive. Both systems will boot up fine its just that for some reason it won't boot to the internal drive (with vista) unless the external is connected. I just put the HD in another laptop only to have the same problem.
I recently recieved Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition CD-ROM through snail-mail after requesting a copy online and I want to install it on my laptop, although I wish to keep Vista which is on it now.
My laptop has a 250GB hard drive. Although when in Vista this is represented as two separate drives each of 110GB, (C or ACER and (D or DATA.
Using the CD, I start the installation and everything is straightforward and self explanatory, until I get stuck at step 4...
Where I am told by the ubuntu installer: "This computer has several operating systems on it." (I'm confused now, I thought it had one, Vista.)
Beneath I am shown a bar representing my disk space which is divided between...
I am given the option to use the entire disk: 'SCSI1 (0,0,0)(sda) - 250.1GB ATA WDC WD2500BEVT - 2', (and from the mention of 250BG in the name I'm assuming this is one disk and not the two separate drives named C: & D: in Vista.) ...along with a warning - "This will delete Windows Vista (loader), Windows Vista (loader), Microsoft Windows XP Embedded and install Ubuntu 9.04". (The aforementioned "several operating systems" obviously.)
But I wish to keep Vista, so I select the option to "specify partitions manually" and am brought to a screen named 'Prepare Partitions', where there is a table somewhat like this:
I am then given the option for "New partition table", and if I select any of the bottom four devices I can 'edit partition' or 'delete partition'.
Selecting the device /dev/sda3 (because it is the one that I'm guessing has no operating system data on it, judging by the previous screen) and choosing 'edit partition', allows me the following options...to create a new partition size, to select what I want to use the partition as. (There are also two options for formating a partition, which is a checkbox, and Mount point. These are both greyed out.)
When I look at the 'Use as:' option, within 'edit partition', the drop down box allows me to use the partition in the following ways: - do not use the partition - swap area - NTFS - FAT 32 file system - FAT16 file system - XFS journaling file system - ReiserFS journaling file system - Ext2 file system - Ext4 journaling file system - Ext3 journaling file system
I have tried the following techniques to try and boot from CD on my Acer Aspire 5515 laptop: Change SATA information to Native in BIOS. Set the Boot order for the CD/DVD Drive to start first, along with Main driver starting second.
INFORMATION
My laptop is an Acer Aspire 5515. BIOS Version is V1.0 (latest) from Acer. PhoenixBIOS bios (?).
I have still not been successfully able to boot from CD. No matter if it says to boot from CD/DVD Drive first, it skips on to Main driver and starts Windows. It's not because I didn't burn the .ISO image right, because it worked on my desktop, which is ALSO an Acer, an Acer Aspire T180. What I am trying to do, is install Windows XP Professional, and dual-boot it with my Windows Vista. Only thing is, it WON'T boot from CD.
I'm still not all confident using sudo, so if you could explain what I need to do in simple steps including the commands I would be ever so grateful. I need my Windows back 'cause while I'm perfectly happy on ubuntu at home, my boss at work thinks Linux is an exotic metalworking tool (or something like that).
