Ubuntu, Grub, and Windows 7

By Gone
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Grand Master

Gone

Posted
Posted

Hello,

So recently I have set up my new computer (craigslist finds many deals for those of you in the US :)). Anyway, I have three hard drives hooked up in this order, My first hard drive has Windows 7 on it (C:, or /dev/sda1), My second hard drive which holds my Ubuntu installation (/dev/sdb1), and then my third drive which is just a backup.

My first drive I have my Windows boot loader on it, with two entries: One for Windows 7 and one for Ubuntu. My second hard drive I installed Grub onto, which has a menu for the various kernels and of course to boot up Windows.

Here is my issue and what I did to try to solve it, but to no avail. Every time I boot into Windows, everything is fine until I restart my computer or shut down. After I exit Windows, and try to boot into Ubuntu, Grub can no longer see my Ubuntu installation (No such device found, no partition found). Of course my second hard drive is fine, I am able to boot into my recovery CD and fix Grub after a few hours, and boot back into my Ubuntu. But the second I launch Windows 7, it screws with my Ubuntu boot partition somehow. Grub is fine, it has the right menu but is Unable to see any hard drive except /dev/sda1 [Windows].

So I want to install Grub to my Windows boot loader, /dev/sda, but to have my boot partition on /dev/sdb3 (I just re-sized my partition for 500 megabytes specifically for /boot). I tried following a tutorial on the internet to install Grub, however I am afraid if I choose to install my Grub onto /dev/sda, that it will somehow corrupt my Windows Partition.

How do I install just the boot loader onto /dev/sda while having the Grub Stage 2 files on my /dev/sdb3 partition? Also, how to I configure Ubuntu to mount /dev/sdb3 as /boot automatically, as that partition was not originally there when I installed it.

Thank you!

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YouWhat

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Posted

From what I can remember you need to install grub onto the windows drive, although saying this, it has been a while since I dual booted linux and windows on a machine, but installing it on the windows partition will not screw up the boot sequences and it should fix the problems you are having, Windows will just have to be selected from the grub menu to boot into unless you edit the config file for it to default boot into windows.

Grand Master

Gone

Posted
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Posted

Well I ended up switching my Linux drive and Windows drive physically to the opposite slots they were in, and reinstalled Ubuntu. Now I can boot into Ubuntu fine, but for some reason Grub will not boot into Windows now, giving me the error that Ubuntu previously had:

error: no such device

error: no such partition

I recovered the Windows MBR, using bootsect /nt60 all, bootsect /nt60 sys /mbr bootrec /fixmbr, etc, then I reinstalled Grub onto my Linux drive, and reconfigured the menu.lst file. However, I still get the same error when trying to boot into Windows from Grub. Does it sound like a hardware issue, or Grub sucks at seeing the two different hard drives?

Enthusiast

YouWhat

Posted
Posted

Grub needs to be the initial boot sector, then windows, for some reason, the way you have set things up is messing this up.

Computer On --> Grub --> Windows

Computer On --> Grub --> Linux

Either way grub needs to be installed to the 1st device set to boot from.

Going back to your original setup....

sda1 - Windows (Has to be installed 1st)

sdb1 - Linux (Has to be installed last)

Boot partition is to be set on sda1 so as grub manages the boot up and os.

Everything works then as it should.

Other option

Install Windows

Disconnect windows hard drive

Install Linux on other drive

Reconnect Windows drive

Use your computers bios boot device selector to change which os to boot from (Usually F11)

Contributor

Princess Katie Pixie

Posted
Posted

Mostly I use Windows XP on my virtual machine since it's much easier to setup and configure then using it on my host machine. Since i don't use plugins or anything on my host machine that's why.

Same with ubuntu, just use it on a virtual machine since it's much easier to configure and setup without knowing that it will have problems on the host machine.

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