Can't Dual Boot winxp (installed first) ubuntu 8.04

[benny999]

hello i just installed ubuntu the newest version and i had xp preinstalled. I resized my hard drive to have 100gb partition free area and used the guided use the most free space option, when setting hard drive and tryed a couple of other ways all installed but wouldn't come up with the dual boot screen.

ps i had no errors when installing



Thanks for your help

[ajmorris]

hi there,
we are going to re-install your bootloader, grub.

open up a terminal and type in the following commands:


1) sudo grub


2) find /boot/grub/stage1


3) root (hd#,#) Where #,# are the numbers found in step 2)


4) setup (hd0)

5) quit
Then, when you reboot, XP should be an option in the boot menu. If it is not, we can add it :)

AJ

[benny999]

oops should have said this windows xp was installed first so it boots in xp

but thanks for the help much appreciated

[ajmorris]

ah, in that case, do the same commands i outlined, but in a linux live cd :) (it doesnt have to be an ubuntu live cd, it can be any linux live cd)

AJ

[benny999]

ok cool thanks got it working now i was wondering if i could move xp to the top of the list and have like a 20 second count down and it auto runs the os up the top

can you do that?

thank you very much oh im running my fresh ubuntu right now :)

[thecheatah]

I dont know if its a good idea to move it to the top of the list, as that list is automatically generated. (it might be smart enough to work with it), but what I do is modify the default choice.

File: /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find line:
default 0
that basically says which item to select, the 0th being the first item in the list. So if you have 6 entries in there (including the other os thing which you cant select) you should set it to 5.

Find line:
timeout 10
This basically sets in second how long to wait before automatically making a selection.