I've been trying to configure my desktop to dual-boot Ubuntu and Windows XP, and have followed all the supposed steps, until now I've hit a snag that has driven me to my wit's end. I have Ubuntu installed fine on its own partition, and I can even boot it externally from the System Rescue Disk. I have tried several methods of extracting the GRUB bootloader from the Linux partition, including a tool I downloaded for the purpose and booting Gentoo externally from the System Rescue disk and doing the following:



sda6 is the linux partition with all the files, including the bootloader, and sda7 is the FAT32 partition for filesharing.

The BIN file shows up on my shared FAT32 partition just fine in Windows, and I moved it to I:\ubuntu.bin (I:\ is my booting Windows partition), and I edited I:\boot.ini so that its last line reads



Everything works fine (I see Linux in the dual-boot menu), except when I select it and try to boot, it says "Windows could not read the boot drive.. hardware configuration error" or something to that effect.

Is there anything I'm doing obviously wrong? Help? Oh, I should also note due to the 1,024 cylinder issue (which I'm pretty sure my BIOS doesn't have), I also tried mounting /boot and GRUB to a tiny partition inside the cylinder limit; same result.

There's no reason you should be trying to use the windows bootloader
Boot into ubuntu (you said you can, right?)
check /boot/grub/menu.lst and make sure it has the correct boot setup (i.e. an option for both windows and ubuntu)
and run sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 31 2008, 12:02 am by Doodle77.

lmao. using windows bootloader... =P
did you really think microsoft would let you dualboot?

also, i think it's /boot/grub/menu.lst

A number of articles I saw gave warnings that Windows would complain if you wrote GRUB over its own bootloader, but I'll try that when I get home.

EDIT: Whoever the hell wrote to use the windows bootloader was an idiot. I wrote GRUB to the master boot record and I can boot both OSes fine

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 31 2008, 3:12 am by DT_Battlekruser.

Did you put that ubuntu.bin file on the same drive as boot.ini? If so, did you also try C:\ubuntu.bin in boot.ini instead?

A reason it can be good to use the Windows boot-loader to load GRUB instead of using GRUB as the main boot-loader is that if you ever reinstall or upgrade Windows, you won't lose access to GRUB and have to repair it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 31 2008, 6:21 am by ShadowFlare.

Yes, it was in the same drive, same folder as boot.ini. In this case it is my I:\ drive since that's the way Windows assigned the drives when I first built the computer (I really have no idea why, actually - floppy is A, four multimedia drive slots are B, F, G, and H, and CD drives are D and E. But my booting HD is I and my usb port is J.

No, I didn't try C:\ubuntu.bin, but I don't see why that would help if the booting drive for windows is I:\.

In any event, GRUB is written to the master boot record now, and everything works, so I doubt I'm going to ever bother putting the windows loader back on it. The computer I'm using isn't going to be in use for much more than another year or so, and I highly, highly doubt I will see any reason to upgrade from XP Pro to Vista.

Well, the boot loader may know nothing of the drive assignments used in Windows, and as that is your first hard drive, the boot loader may consider it to be C:

Vista SP1 will refuse to install if you have GRUB on your MBR, but you can just put the windows bootloader back before you install SP1 and then reinstall GRUB's MBR.