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Sillychicken

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19 years ago

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Sillychicken

11 Posts

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3663

September 11th, 2007 21:00

Unable to boot from windows disk after Ubuntu installation

Hi there. I loaded Ubuntu on to my E520. Before that when I first got my system, I formated my hard drive and reinstalled WinMCE. At the same time as the re installation, I created 2 partitions on the drive. At a later date I installed Ubuntu.
 
My issue is that I am unable to boot the Windows MCE disk .  I just get a bsod. I wanted to get rid of the 2 dell partitions and move them over to the Ubuntu partition. Does anybody have  any suggestions?
 
Thanks.
  • N

    noipospf

    15 Posts

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    Posted September 15th, 2007 13:00

    One of the better ways to dual-boot your system is to allow NTLDR to handle the boot entries.
     
    Here's how it works:
     
    1. Create a primary partition for your XP installation and leave the rest of the disk untouched.
     
    2. Install XP as you like.
     
    3. Boot into the linux installer (I'll use Ubuntu here) and create the necessary root and swap partitions for your Linux distro.
     
    4. Change the location of the grub (boot loader) install to the root linux (/) parition (in my case, /dev/sda2). The default is normally the MBR of the primary drive (/dev/hda) but we want to avoid this.
     
    5. Don't reboot at the end of the install. Insert a memory key or the like and run the following command from a terminal:
     
    sudo dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/media/KINGSTON/bootsect.lnx b*=512 count=1
     
    (replace the asterisk above with an S...apparently Dell's forum moderating 'guidelines' don't care for b and s together.....)
     
    Explanation of above:
     
    if = input file --> the first 512 bytes from the root linux partition where we installed GRUB, this is used to tell NTLDR the correct jump address
     
    of = output file --> /media is where the USB key is mounted, KINGSTON is the volume name, bootsect.lnx will be the actual file name being written, but you can call it whatever you like, so long as you maintain 8.3 filename compatibility.
     
    6. Now you basically have a copy of the GRUB boot sector for your Linux installation, so reboot into Windows, and copy the bootsect.lnx (or whatever you called it) to the root of the system drive.
     
    7. Make an entry at the end of your boot.ini file that points to this new loader file:
    ie: C:\bootsect.lnx="Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (7.04)"
     
    Voila...the Windows NTLDR can now boot your linux installation. AND, if you upgrade/install Vista at some point, you don't lose your ability to boot into your Linux distro either.

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