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Thread: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

  1. #1
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    Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    I have been reading to see if I may fix the problem by copying another user's advice, but it seems that problems are a bit unique in Linux. I'm a windows user, so using the command line is kind of foreign to me, but I did follow some instructions and have the boot repair report.

    http://paste.ubuntu.com/5630231/


    I duel booted onto the same 2TB HDD, partitioning a section off for the Ubuntu installation which I installed by using a USB flash drive, having to follow the additional instructions of renaming isolinux to syslinus and doing the same to isolinux.cfg and isolinux.bin. Dunno if it means anything to you, but I know it was something I had to do that wasn't automatically done for me, so I figured that's a possible source of user error.

    Not sure what other information to give as I can't really think of any more details.


    [SOLVED] In the boot menu where I could select my USB to install Ubuntu from, there was one option that literally had "UEFI:" before the USB stick name. Don't pick that one. That will apparently tell your PC to NOT put GRUB in sda. [SOLVED]
    Last edited by Tresus; March 21st, 2013 at 04:32 PM.

  2. #2
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    I don't know how but I think you have installed GRUB to /dev/sda5, when it should have been installed to /dev/sda. Meaning, Grub should be installed on the HDD (/dev/sda) and not on the partition (/dev/sda5).

    The simplest method will be to REINSTALL UBUNTU and when doing so you have choose "Something Else" option to manually control the installation. Read Here. And select /dev/sda to install GRUB (be warned that this will overwrite Winodows Boot Loader but that is normal).

    Or You can remove Grub and reinstall it using Ubuntu LiveCD/DVD/USB. See How To.
    Last edited by fantab; March 20th, 2013 at 07:32 AM.
    "Evolution is Nature's way of issuing upgrades."


  3. #3
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    So deleting the windows boot loader wouldn't provide any negative side effects?

  4. #4
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    NONE. Instead of Windows Boot Loader you will have a far better, GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader). Windows boot loader will not boot Linux on its own, on the other hand Grub boots both Windows and Linux.
    I hope you have Windows Install Disk? If not, then I suggest that you make a Windows Repair Disc from within Windows-Control Panel before you Overwrite Windows bootloader. This will be helpful, in case, in future you want to remove Ubuntu and only have Windows.

    There is, however a way to boot Ubuntu from Windows Boot Loader.. See here. Actually, you can do this considering your situation.
    But I recommend that you use GRUB on /dev/sda.

    Good Luck...
    Last edited by fantab; March 20th, 2013 at 09:25 AM.
    "Evolution is Nature's way of issuing upgrades."


  5. #5
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    Quote Originally Posted by fantab View Post
    NONE. Instead of Windows Boot Loader you will have a far better, GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader). Windows boot loader will not boot Linux on its own, on the other hand Grub boots both Windows and Linux.
    Unfortunately, this is not true. The Windows boot loader is REQUIRED in order to boot into Windows.

    When you have an entry in the GRUB config file for Windows, all that really does is hand off the boot process to the Windows boot loader in that partition.
    Ubuntu 20.04, Mint 19.10; MS Win10 Pro.
    Will not respond to PM requests for support -- use the forums.

  6. #6
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    @Mark Phelps: We will confuse the OP. We know that GRUB will NOT actually delete the Winodows Boot Loader. I just tried to give the simplest possible answer to a beginner. Perhaps I did not come across as clear as I hoped to.
    What I wanted to tell the OP is that Grub WILL mess up the Windows Boot Loader and if he/she wanted to revert back to Ubuntu he has to FIX Windows first to boot. May be you can put it in better words. Thanks.
    "Evolution is Nature's way of issuing upgrades."


  7. #7
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    Ok, so to put it simply.

    Reinstall Ubuntu.
    Install GRUB in sda.
    GRUB will take control of boot process.
    GRUB can then either boot into Ubuntu or hand control over to Windows boot loader to boot into Win 7.
    But in order to go back to JUST Windows 7, I'd have to repair the installation.

    So unless I, for some god awful reason, wanted to get rid of Ubuntu later, installing GRUB to sda would be just fine, then?

    Sorry for so many questions. I'm just kinda nervous about messing with critical files.

  8. #8
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    Since you already have Boot-Repair you can just use it to install grub to MBR. It could also reinstall a Windows type boot loader to the MBR if grub does ever have issues.

    But a reinstall may still be a good idea. You have a large 2TB drive. There used to be a bug in grub supposedly fixed with either very large / (root) partitions or partition beyond about 500GB on a large drive. With some BIOS we still see the same issue, so cannot guarantee it will boot. Most seem to work but not all. Sometimes just having a smaller / (root) of 25GB and use the rest of the space for /home works also. So if you reinstall you have to use manual install or Something Else to choose partitions and can then create the separte partition for /home.

    I generally prefer smaller system partitions and larger data partitions. That way hard drive does not have to jump all over drive to load the most used files. So I also have smaller Windows system partition and separate NTFS data partition for any data you may want to share with Linux.

    Install with separate /home from aysiu
    http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome
    UEFI boot install & repair info - Regularly Updated :
    https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2147295
    Please use Thread Tools above first post to change to [Solved] when/if answered completely.

  9. #9
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tresus View Post
    ... So unless I, for some god awful reason, wanted to get rid of Ubuntu later, installing GRUB to sda would be just fine, then?
    But, to be safe, after you do that, open a terminal in Ubuntu and enter "sudo update-grub". That will regenerate the GRUB config file and add an entry for Win7.

    When you reboot after that, you should be seeing a GRUB menu.
    Ubuntu 20.04, Mint 19.10; MS Win10 Pro.
    Will not respond to PM requests for support -- use the forums.

  10. #10
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    Re: Dual Booting goes straight to Windows 7. No OS choice given.

    Well I've attempted to reinstall several times. Installed GRUB to sda, the hard drive. Windows said "nope."

    Installed GRUB to sda1, the windows boot partition. Windows said "nope."

    This is becoming incredibly frustrating.

    Using a UEFI BIOS if that means anything to you.
    Last edited by Tresus; March 21st, 2013 at 07:05 AM.

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