Hi,
I have installed Ubuntu 5.10 on my office computer along with WinXP. I didnot have any problems with installation. But after installation Ubuntu has become the default OS. As I remember during installation Ubuntu didnot ask for boot order preference as Redhat does.

My colleagues are horified at the site of linux?! [Well, I had to tell them that its linux ] They want their *favourite* windows to be intact and load first.

Somebody guide me how to make xp boot as default OS. I can always reboot into Ubuntu at my leisure.

For this to work you needed to install either Grub or Lilo. You need to make the change in your boot loader, and make windbloze 'default'. Which one did you install? The method to change the default OS is a little different depending on which one you installed.

Edit this section of your /boot/grub/menu.lst and put in the number of the entry for the XP in the file and it should boot by default.

Thanks friends, got it.

I cannot save the file I edited because I do not have the permission. Does this mean I need to log as an administrator? I do not know how to get the screen that allows me to run as an administrator so I can save the menu.lst file. Or is there another way. i know i get a screen when I install software.

In Ubuntu you use the command 'sudo' to get root privileges. Open a command prompt, and type, as an example 'sudo kate'. The system will prompt you for the root password. Type it in, the cursor does not move, press enter. If the password is correct, the system will run the editor named kate. Open your file, edit it, save it. You should have set the root password during the install.

Use any editor you want, kate is just an example.

Okay, here ore overall instructions

Applications>Accessories>Terminal

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

password?: yourpassword [enter]

it will open the file edit it as mentioned above and you will be able to save it.

Thank you - I think I got it. Must reboot now to see if this work. Scarry!

So, I rebooted and got an error because I misscounted the number of lines - I put 3 for default but needed 4. After that it worked. Pretty cool!
I have Ubuntu on its own drive but it is very slow. What could the problem be?

When you say it is slow, could you be more specific. Is it during booting, running a web browser, or some other application?

Could you also post the hardware you are running Ubuntu on? What version and release of Ubuntu?

Lots of things can make it appear "slow".

Well - this is not a new desktop computer - It is the latest version of Ubuntu. It is a 2.93 gighz processor - 2 gig of memory - the hard drive it is one has 20 gig (older). OK video card with 56 k mem.
It is slow booting and seems slow to browse. (Using wireless connection).

It is definitely slower than that other OS it dual boots with.


Thanks.
Marie

For the slow booting, have a look through the messages logged during boot. From a konsole, type 'dmesg' and you will see a bunch of messages on your screen. You can use grep to search for things like error or timeout. I don't think the slowness has anything to do with hardware. See if you can find anything that might give us a clew as to why booting is slow.

Browsing, Have you tried different browsers? Missing plugins can be troublesome. I have seen on some systems IPv6 causing slowness. Unless you need it, it can be disabled. To find out if it is loaded, from a konsole, do a 'sudo lsmod' and look for a IPv6 module. I may have nothing to do with it, but at this point it is guess work.

while installing grub in ubuntu u can make which os u want to be as default

Part of your answer to the question of how to change the default boot OS, says that your answer depends on whether "Grub" or "Lilo" has been used.

How does one find out whether they have "Grub" or "Lilo"?

Thank you,
Julia