Cannot multiboot Ubuntu10.04 from Windows XP bootloader

[jokus]

Hello Folks,

I am trying to install Ubuntu10.04 on my machine which already has on it, Win XP. Lemme lay down the setup of my machine first of all.

I got a new 320GB HDD of which I have taken 20GB as the primary partition and installed Win XP on it. Took another 220GB as an extended partition for my data storage. Around 63GB was remaining which I left it as unallocated. Decided to try Ubuntu, but preferred to boot it from the windows bootloader. Downloaded and burned the Ubuntu-10.04-desktop-amd64.iso(have a AMD x3 425 machine) and tried an install on 30GB of the 63 left.

I did not try any partition scheme. I chose the manual partition option, made a 28GB ext4 partition, made it primary, mounted the /, took another 2GB for the swap and proceeded. Chose advanced option and installed grub on the 28GB(/dev/sda6) and completed the installation.

Since no grub was installed, Ubuntu was not available. So then, used the bootpart utility to point grub to the windows bootloader, but it did not work, was giving me error when I chose Ubuntu from the bootmenu modified by the bootpart.

So tried booting with the same install cd, chose Live Ubuntu this time and mounted the 28GB, copied the first 512bytes using dd if=/dev/sda6 of=ubuntu bs=512 count=1 to a usb drive. Rebooted into windows and copied the file to C:\ and added it to the boot.ini. Rebooted and tried choosing Ubuntu from the boot menu but it does not work. I get a blank screen with the cursor blinking.

The machine is new and BIOS is LBA enabled by auto. Now what am I doing wrong. How do I go about solving the situation. Could you guys please shed some light over this.

Thanks.

[jokus]

Is Wubi the only way to go about doing this ?

[darkod]

Why are you trying so hard to make the windows bootloader work, when Microsoft hasn't? Just use grub2 on the MBR.
As for wubi, have in mind that wubi is not developed to serve as long term install, just a quick try (which you can also do with the cd in live mode). Sooner or later it will start having issues. Why would you force an OS to be installed inside another OS? Do you have XP installed inside another OS?

Of course, you can do as you wish. Keep ignoring the potential of grub2 and try to make XP bootloader work. Unfortunately I can't help with that because I don't know. I'm not even sure XP bootloader can handle chainloading to grub2.

[jokus]

Thanks for your reply Darko.

But the fact is that the machine is not really mine and hence I would like to keep the XP bootloader intact. At any point I need to uninstall Ubuntu, if grub2 is installed, would it not be a problem ?

[darkod]

Thanks for your reply Darko.

But the fact is that the machine is not really mine and hence I would like to keep the XP bootloader intact. At any point I need to uninstall Ubuntu, if grub2 is installed, would it not be a problem ?

Depending on the approach. Unfortunately many people simply delete the ubuntu partition first and when they reboot and get grub error and can't boot anything, they complain of course.

But if you first restore windows bootloader to the MBR of the disk, later deleting the ubuntu partition is no problem. By the way, you can install generic MBR which can boot windows (as long as the boot flag is set to the correct partition because windows depends on it), even without having XP/Vista/7 install media, if that is your worry.

You can do it using a command from lilo (you will not run lilo as your bootloader). When you have decided you've had enough of ubuntu, boot into ubuntu and do:

sudo apt-get install lilo
sudo lilo -M /dev/sda mbr (instead of /dev/sda use the correct disk name if different)

Ignore the warnings it will give. That installs generic mbr on /dev/sda. Restart and windows should boot straight. Then just delete the ubuntu partition(s) and use them as ntfs.

[jokus]

Yes, infact the issue is with the lack of install media(maybe at the point of time) only by which I can restore the bootloader. That was the reason for me going this way to boot from the Windows bootloader itself.

So what is this generic bootloader ? Will the above said commands install a actual windows bootloader to the MBR or some other bootloader ? The issue is, should this bootloader does not load windows and am without a windows install media, it would be an issue.

[kansasnoob]

Thanks for your reply Darko.

But the fact is that the machine is not really mine and hence I would like to keep the XP bootloader intact. At any point I need to uninstall Ubuntu, if grub2 is installed, would it not be a problem ?

Don't mess with machines you don't own

[jokus]

Well ... its not like I can't use it, just that I want to keep it intact but I also want Ubuntu for now..!