daviddunford
May 7th, 2010, 04:03 PM
I recently tried out Ubuntu 9.10 on an old computer and was so impressed I added it as a dual boot option to my main computer, alongside Windows 7. I installed it from Windows and it worked fine, booting from a Windows boot menu that defaulted, as I wanted, to W7. A few days ago I was offered an upgrade to 10.4. Half way through the upgrade the process hung (I think while installing MemTest) so I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Del and the system rebooted. It proceeded to load the remaining files then asked me where I wanted the Grub loader to be installed. As I had Ububntu installed on a different physical drive from Windows, I asked for Grub to go on that drive - then realised too late that this would give me an unbootable machine.
After much experimenting with rescue discs, I simply disconnected the secondary drive and was now able to boot into Windows again. I used a rescue disk to delete the Ubuntu folder from the reconnected secondary drive, rebooted Windows and tried to reinstall Ubuntu from Windows. This failed several times (wubi.exe - I think - refused to run). So I downloaded the iso of 10.4 and installed Ubuntu from that. This time it installed itself on a new partition on my primary disk and ran perfectly - except that the grub loader defaulted to booting Ubuntu, which would confuse the other users of the computer!
The advice I found was to edit menu.lst - but this file was nowhere to be found. It was only after much searching that I discovered that this had been replaced in this version by grub.cfg and that this couldn't be directly edited. So I traced the grub file that you are supposed to edit, only to find it was read only and I didn't have ownership of it to change its attributes. So that was another search to discover how to take ownership of a file. Eventually it was all sorted, my machine boots by default into W7, but the impressive Ubuntu 10.4 is available as well. I just wonder whether all things Ubintu are going to be as complicated as this. I'm an experienced PC user and I don't mind getting my hands dirty, but I imagine a lot of people would have given up in despair. Did I do anything absurdly wrong? I know I put the Grub loader in the wrong location, but it seems a natural mistake to make!
After much experimenting with rescue discs, I simply disconnected the secondary drive and was now able to boot into Windows again. I used a rescue disk to delete the Ubuntu folder from the reconnected secondary drive, rebooted Windows and tried to reinstall Ubuntu from Windows. This failed several times (wubi.exe - I think - refused to run). So I downloaded the iso of 10.4 and installed Ubuntu from that. This time it installed itself on a new partition on my primary disk and ran perfectly - except that the grub loader defaulted to booting Ubuntu, which would confuse the other users of the computer!
The advice I found was to edit menu.lst - but this file was nowhere to be found. It was only after much searching that I discovered that this had been replaced in this version by grub.cfg and that this couldn't be directly edited. So I traced the grub file that you are supposed to edit, only to find it was read only and I didn't have ownership of it to change its attributes. So that was another search to discover how to take ownership of a file. Eventually it was all sorted, my machine boots by default into W7, but the impressive Ubuntu 10.4 is available as well. I just wonder whether all things Ubintu are going to be as complicated as this. I'm an experienced PC user and I don't mind getting my hands dirty, but I imagine a lot of people would have given up in despair. Did I do anything absurdly wrong? I know I put the Grub loader in the wrong location, but it seems a natural mistake to make!