Dual Boot Troubles

[Pilot4Fun]

Hi everyone,

I am using a Dell Dimension 4600 with BIOS version A12. I have 2 disk drives installed and partitioned as follows:

IDE1 Master: pinned Cable Select
hda1: primary, 10gb ext3 /
hda5: logical, 59gb ext 3 /home
hda6: logical, 130gb fat32 /windows (for shared data)
hda7: logical, 1gb swap

IDE1 Secondary: (was originally the Master): pinned Cable Select
this drive was originally the only drive in the system, and it contains a Dell Recovery Utility partition (47mb FAT) and the Windows partition (75gb ntfs - Drive C)

I installed Kubuntu without the Secondary drive installed, so everything pertaining to Kubuntu installed on the Primary drive, including GRUB. After installation and updating of packages, I connected the secondary drive and edited Grub's menu.lst file to include the Windows partition on the secondary drive as the default boot device. Here's the problem. The BIOS options for specifying the boot device only includes an option for "hard disk drive C". It does not include any options for choosing the primary or secondary drive. So, when the system boots, it never gets to Grub - it boots from drive C, which is the Windows partition on the secondary drive. So I never get the opportunity to override the Grub default and boot Kubuntu.

The only way I can do it is to hit <F12> when given the option, which brings up the boot menu - then I can choose to boot from the Primary IDE drive, which brings up the Grub boot options.

I have read a lot of postings about dual booting with 2 drives, and I haven't seen anyone else reporting this situation. I know I could reinstall Kubuntu with the drive positions reversed (Windows primary and Kubuntu secondary) and let the installation install Grub on the Windows drive, but I want to keep Grub on the Kubuntu drive rather than have it clobber the MBR on my Windows drive.

What am I missing? Any ideas?

Thanks!

[koolman7]

Re: Dual Boot Troubles

Hi everyone,

I am using a Dell Dimension 4600 with BIOS version A12. I have 2 disk drives installed and partitioned as follows:

IDE1 Master: pinned Cable Select
hda1: primary, 10gb ext3 /
hda5: logical, 59gb ext 3 /home
hda6: logical, 130gb fat32 /windows (for shared data)
hda7: logical, 1gb swap

IDE1 Secondary: (was originally the Master): pinned Cable Select
this drive was originally the only drive in the system, and it contains a Dell Recovery Utility partition (47mb FAT) and the Windows partition (75gb ntfs - Drive C)

I installed Kubuntu without the Secondary drive installed, so everything pertaining to Kubuntu installed on the Primary drive, including GRUB. After installation and updating of packages, I connected the secondary drive and edited Grub's menu.lst file to include the Windows partition on the secondary drive as the default boot device. Here's the problem. The BIOS options for specifying the boot device only includes an option for "hard disk drive C". It does not include any options for choosing the primary or secondary drive. So, when the system boots, it never gets to Grub - it boots from drive C, which is the Windows partition on the secondary drive. So I never get the opportunity to override the Grub default and boot Kubuntu.

The only way I can do it is to hit <F12> when given the option, which brings up the boot menu - then I can choose to boot from the Primary IDE drive, which brings up the Grub boot options.

I have read a lot of postings about dual booting with 2 drives, and I haven't seen anyone else reporting this situation. I know I could reinstall Kubuntu with the drive positions reversed (Windows primary and Kubuntu secondary) and let the installation install Grub on the Windows drive, but I want to keep Grub on the Kubuntu drive rather than have it clobber the MBR on my Windows drive.

What am I missing? Any ideas?

Thanks!

I'm about to be a Kubuntu user, be do not want to loose the windows OS and Data.  I have not found an opinion on the partioning of the "c" drive, weather you loose data.  Just always backup. Gary,    kuhlman7@cox.net

[analyticalman]

Re: Dual Boot Troubles

Normally, these problems don't arise because you have Grub on you MBR which is very flexible. You have to do "Something" because your MBR needs to have some way of giving you a choice of OS to boot into (although you could boot from a floppy to get into Kubuntu if that would suit you). What you can do is use an alternate boot manager such as Bootmagic that you install from windows- and that should work, but really, the elegant solution is to put Grub onto your MBR which then gives you the most control over your boot options

[LegendaryXL]

Re: Dual Boot Troubles

i am having similar troubles. i have a dell optiplex with a 40GB hdd (primary master). and Kubuntu was installed on a second hdd 4GB (secondary cable select). this is my first time trying to install linux onto a system that already had another OS. i got a grub boot error something like "loading stage 1.5" and error 2. how can i repair what's necessary to be able to boot into windows? or at least get grub to work so i can choose my OS? i desperately need help asap. thanks in advance.

{final update}
thanks to some stupidity on my part, i had to reinstall windows (actually just upgrade) all over again. gonna try to just install kubuntu on a system that has nothing, but cant because my other boards wont let me boot from CD thanks for the info on how to get my windows back.