hi,

i tried to install ubuntu on a PC with two hard disks and windows vista installed on the secondary drive (i know).

to make matters worse, the primary disk was previously in another computer, and had windows xp on it. it was transplanted into this machine without being formatted.

when installing ubuntu, the pc said i had xp installed, but didn't even notice vista, which is the os currently used.

to cut a long story stort(er), i installed ubuntu but the pc boots to vista without any option to boot ubuntu. i think there are two boot partitions, one on each disk, and i want to tell the mbr on the vista partition to look for ubuntu.

can anyone offer any help?

thanks,
rik.

There are lots of tutorials out there on dual booting, especially now that MS changed the way windows boots up.
I found this with a quick google: http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vi...lled_first.htm

thanks for replying.

i have followed instruction similat to the ones you provided, but the problem was that the ubuntu installer didn't see the vista installation.

i think i have a pc with 2 disks: each with their own mbr?? i think i need to tell the vista boot loader about ubuntu, or replace it with the ubuntu loader and tell that about vista.

that's the bit i'm stuck on!!!

thanks,
rik.

hmmm...I don't know if vista even has a bootloader, i would recommend installing grub---when i install debian using the installDVD it comes with grub as an option- i guess you might want to see if you can burn a bootable grub installer to a disk and then reboot and grub should see each of your disks and partitions and ask you which one you want as the main...anyways good luck!
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Go to sf.net and get (and run) the bootinfo script. Post the RESULTS.txt here.

I think it's just your BIOS has been setup to boot the Vista drive. You simply need to change the BIOS boot sequence.

the only one i could find is a bash script. i can only currently boot into vista. thanks.

thanks, the bios only has boot from 'hard disk', with no differentiation between slave/master disk.

Ooops - sorry about that. Use a (Linux) liveCD if you have one, will do just as well.

hi
i was having one (1) HDD of 160GB on which i have installed WIN XP; WIN VISTA and LINUX IE:- FC(9)
1St. i installed Win XP SP-2
then Win VISTA SP-1
it was having dual boot
then i installed LINUX FC-9 on the same HDD
then it got the Triple BOOT
but i did not have any problem
but now i have three (3) HDD of 160GB each in which
1). i have Win XP SP-3
2). i have Win VISTA SP-2 and
3). i have LINUX FC-10
i just have to change the boot sequence from the CMOS BIOS(as my kid's can't boot from grub in 30 sec.'s ) and it is safe if 1 OS is failed you have other to use


sorry i did not read all the post's

Is this a Desktop PC?
Did you install vista on the second drive? Was it pre-instalaled? Who installed xp? Was it pre-installed? Are you certain xp was on that drive? Ubuntu didn't recognize vista installed on a drive, was the drive plugges in? Does your BIOS recognize both drives? Whic drive did you install Ubuntu to, the one with xp or the one with vista?

Not likely if you didn't create them or are you confusing boot partition with master boot record?

Easier said than done. Installing Grub correctly is a lot easier but if you want to boot from vista, I would suggest you go to neosmart technologies website and download a program called EasyBCD to edit the vista boot files. Obviously, it would be a good idea to read the documentation before jumping in.

You could also use any Linux Live CD and log in to a terminal as root to run the command: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L) which would give you partition information which you could post here and likely get some specific suggestions.

Is this a Desktop PC?
Did you install vista on the second drive? Was it pre-installed? Who installed xp? Was it pre-installed? Are you certain xp was on that drive? Ubuntu didn't recognize vista installed on a drive, was the drive plugged in? Does your BIOS recognize both drives? Which drive did you install Ubuntu to, the one with xp or the one with vista?

Not likely if you didn't create them or are you confusing boot partition with master boot record?

Easier said than done. Installing Grub correctly is a lot easier but if you want to boot from vista, I would suggest you go to neosmart technologies website and download a program called EasyBCD to edit the vista boot files. Obviously, it would be a good idea to read the documentation before jumping in.

You could also use any Linux Live CD and log in to a terminal as root to run the command: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L) which would give you partition information which you could post here and likely get some specific suggestions on booting from Grub.