“How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)

[hyperdude111]

“How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)

##This guide does not work for Karamic or future releases, For that see page 14 and follow the link provided by presence1960 for how to dual boot with Grub2 (requires some reading) I will update this guide for grub2 when I have more time##

I have recently seen many posts from people trying to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 beta, but not succeeding. So I tried it out myself and found a solution.
Index
1. Obtain a copy of Windows7.
2. Partition your disk with gparted.
3. Install Windows7.
4. Re-install Grub.
5. Edit Grub to List Windows 7.
6. Have Fun.
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1. Obtain a copy of windows 7.

*You can also find a torrent of this but for legal reasons I cannot provide a link. *


2. Partition your disk

**This does go wrong in some cases, if in doubt back up your valuable data.**

Boot from a Ubuntu live cd or a gparted live cd.
Start up gparted, If ubuntu is on the whole disk you need to re-size it by at least 8 gb for Windows 7. (Make sure windows 7 is on the second partition to make it easier for grub) You will be left with some unallocated space on your hard disk if you want you can partition it to NTFS or you can do it later on the windows install.

3. Install Windows 7

Follow the on screen instructions, Select the un-partitioned space to format and install windows on, or if you already made it NTFS choose your NTFS partition.

**It will ask for a product key but you have 30 days to do that. Note: Beta keys will work with the RC**


4. Re-install GRUB

Now you have windows 7 but it has completely eaten your boot loader so you need to re-install grub.
Boot from the ubuntu live cd and go to terminal.
Type in terminal:

"sudo grub"
"grub> find /boot/grub/stage1"

That should return your Ubuntu partition in the form of (hdX,Y), use that:

grub> root (hdX,Y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

(you don’t need to type the grub> bit)

That has re-installed grub but you can no longer see windows7

5. Edit grub.
Go to terminal from normal ubuntu and type :

“sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”

A large text file will open and at the bottom leave a line and add this:

title windows 7 beta (Loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

(Do not type this line but if that does not work on re-boot try “hdo,0 or hd0,2” and so on until it works.)

Now that is done you can re-boot into windows 7 and ubuntu happily

******************Edit***********************
Hi
I have remembered that if you also have vista installed on your machine when you in install 7, that windows 7 will add itself to the vista bootloader.

So You will need to point grub to the vista partition so it will load the vista loader and give you the option for 7 and vista.

Also To work out what partition number your 7 partiton is use gparted it will give you results like "Windows 7 sda2" that means hda0,2 or if you have two internal hard drives than change the tab in the top right to the appropriate disk. Then take note of the sda2 but as it is on the 2nd drive it will be hda1,2. And so on..........
****************Edit*************************
Wow over 20,000 views

[meistercobbman]

Thanks for the simple tutorial. I installed win7 on virtualbox and it took about 13GB though, not 8GB.

[BLTicklemonster]

Thank you! I installed Windows 7 on a spare hard drive with everything else unplugged so I could just turn the machine off and plug cables back in to run Ubuntu, not knowing if or how I could dual boot, so I'm glad to find this. I'll be trying this out tonight or tomorrow sometime and will come back whining when I hit a glitch, you know, lol.

I do have to say, W7 seems like they got it right. So far the best windows experience I've had with the one exception of using XP to download the first Ubuntu Live CD .iso file, that is.

So, I shouldn't have any problems if I just turn off, plug everything back in the way it was in the beginning, right?

[csddavies]

Excellent article. Worked flawlessly.

[damis648]

Nice little guide, but this pretty much applies to any Windows installation when it is installed after Ubuntu.

[BLTicklemonster]

Jeez, you'd think there was a way to determine which hd was which. I have 4, so it ought to be hd0 through hd3, but I can't get grub to work with one I know is in there no matter what entry I use. I know it's either hd1,1 or hd3,1 because hd0,1 and hd2,1 have ubuntu loaded on both of them, and the other hard drive is storage only. The one in question has two partitions, the first, hd*,0 would not be the operating system, but hd*1, the second partition is the one with the operating system. I edit menu.lst so reflect either hd1,1 or hd3,1, yet each time I try to select the drive at the grub menu, it says that's not a partition. Dang.

And I don't really want to go having to installing anything on a disk to use it...

Oh well.

By the way, the hard drive in question has windows loaded on it, and it was loaded with the drive in the machine by itself.

[DSL5]

I tried this, but I now when I try to boot into Windows 7, I get the following:

BOOTMGR missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

What's going on??

I have XP in (hd0,0), Ubuntu in (hd0,4), and 7 in (hd0,2)

[hyperdude111]

The Alt-Ctrl-Delete Problem normally happens to me after i have re-sized the windows partition after install to fix re install 7 and follow the rest of the guide. If this fails there may be a problem with your grub setup.

[lftolen]

I received the
BOOTMGR missing
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
when I had selected the wrong partition to boot Windows 7. Are you sure you are selecting the correct partition number?

[marmel]

Hi hyperdude111,

Thanks for the guide! Unfortunately it didn't work for me... When I boot Windows 7 via grub the system resets after trying to load Windows and no error message is displayed. I am sure that the partition number in the grub entry is correct (sda1 -> hd0,0).

Any suggestion?

Thank you so much!