External HD W/ Kubuntu. Can not boot WIN from internal W/O External now

[fox420]

Okay as confusing as that title may sound, I have no clue what I am doing. I wanted to try out Kubuntu because of the benifits, but did not want to repartition my main hard drive. Thus I bought an external hard drive, and installed Kubuntu to that, leaving my main HD intact. Well I have no idea about GRUB, but when I boot without my external HD plugged in, I cant boot anything. This is a big frustration because I had no idea it would even touch my windows partition. I do not want to have to plug in my external drive every time i want to boot up windows. PLEASE someone help.

[Snowhog]

Re: External HD W/ Kubuntu. Can not boot WIN from internal W/O External now

Sounds like you had GRUB installed to the MBR of your first (Windows) HD. That explains why, with the external HD not connected, you can't boot at all.

Reconnect the external HD and boot your system. Do you get the GRUB menu, and are you able to select from Linux or Windows? If yes, then be patient. You aren't dead-in-the-water, and help is available. Watch for responses to this post from Qqmike - I'm positive he will add to this discussion, and have the steps you'll need to take to get your system configured how you want it.

Assuming that with the external HD attached, and you are able to boot your system, boot into Linux. Open a console shell and type:

sudo fdisk -l & pg etc/fstab

Copy and paste the results. It will be helpful.

[Qqmike]

Re: External HD W/ Kubuntu. Can not boot WIN from internal W/O External now

This is fixable, it happens all the time (to me and others here), you just have to be patient and go slow.

I just updated this How-to:

How To Make GRUB Thumb Drive
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081748.0

See Reply #1: How to install K/Ubuntu 7.04 to an external USB hard disk drive (HDD)


When you installed Kubuntu to your external drive, somehow GRUB got installed to the MBR of your internal Windows drive. It should have been installed to the MBR of the external drive; BIOS should be set to boot from USB; and the external drive placed in BIOS right after your CDrom drive in the boot order, then comes your Windows drive. So, if the external drive is present, then BIOS will boot from it so when the external drive is connected, your BIOS will boot from it (assuming there is no bootable CDrom in line first).

So, to fix this . . .

1 Fix Windows drive: You gotta restore your Windows Master Boot Record (MBR) on your Windows drive. To do that, you can use your Windows CD and follow the directions on it (I’ve not done this, but I read here many folks who have!). That will make your Windows drive bootable again by the Windows boot loader NTLDR. I believe, if you do not have a Windows CD, that you can use Super Grub Disk to do this also.

Super Grub Disk: http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/
Here’s a How-to on Super Grub Disk:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzo...bDiskPage.html
I haven’t checked it recently, but I’m sure he explains how to use SGD to restore Windows MBR.


2 Fix the external drive: Plug it in, turn on your PC, it should give you a GRUB menu (coming from the external drive), quickly press the “c” key (before the timeout expires), that gives you a GRUB prompt, grub>.
You only have two drives, Windows and external Kubuntu? To be sure, use geometry command to explore your drives:
grub> geometry (hd0)
grub> geometry (hd1)

Your external drive, since you booted from it, will be seen at that GRUB prompt as hd0.
So do:

grub> root (hd0,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

re-boot to test it (grub> reboot: you’ll have to make sure your BIOS is set right to boot from the USB external drive).


(Note: That sets up GRUB from your Kubuntu root (hd0,0) to the MBR of the external drive (hd0); This assumes you put Kubuntu in the first partition of the external drive! If not, or if you are not sure, then do this instead:
grub> find /boot/grub/stage1

That returns some (hd0,y); use that result in the next statement:
grub> root (hd0,y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

re-boot to test it.)