I have 2 SATA drives. One is 160GB and the other 320GB.

The 160GB has Ubuntu 9.10 installed.
The 320GB has Windows 7 installed.

Until a couple days ago, I could set Windows or Ubuntu to boot through the BIOS settings, by selecting the priority for the drives.

There were some Ubuntu updates I installed, and since then I am unable to boot into Windows. If I actually unplug the 160GB drive (Ubuntu), I notice after the option to boot from CD/DVD, something about Grub loader, and not being able to boot.

I've had a look around, and it seems some users have had similar problems, but are looking for different solutions. I do not want to solve this problem by adding a boot loader selection where my wife and kids would have to choose Ubuntu or Windows 7 each time they turned on the computer.

Some posts I've referenced are:
Dual Boot 2 seperate Drives - Add option to Boot Menu?: He's obviously trying to add the boot menu options though.

Can't boot xp from second hard drive after Fedora install: The title made me think this would be helpful, but wasn't really related to my problem.

Strange dual-boot problem?: This is also seeking a boot menu solution, but there are two quotes, which I am assuming to be clues:
"...you need to install grub on the MBR of /dev/sda..."

"Be warned that ubuntu 9.10 is using grub2 which is very different from 'grub legacy'."

I'm still looking for a solution, but any help is appreciated.

P.S. The immediate solution I can think of is resetting the CMOS, however, since it appears to be a Linux issue, I'd prefer to find a Linux solution, if that makes sense.

Why not put grub on a zero wait, and press a key at boot to bring up the grub menu?

Sounds like a good plan...

...alright, I'm off to read the Grub 2 Bootloader - Full tutorial, and will let you know how it goes.

Hmm I just tried that and it doesn't actually work , though I could have sworn I used to do that in the past with the control key ( havn't dual booted for some time ). You could put it as 1 second though and hold down an arrow key to make it wait. Did you check your menu.lst? Maybe grub has been installed onto the windows disk by Ubuntu. If you boot off of the windows install cd you can go into a shell and use the fixmbr command to fix the windows bootloader.

It looks like GRUB was installed on the 160GB drive, and the Vista Bootloader was installed on the 320GB drive. That's great if you always want to do the switching from the bios, but if you want a boot menu, you want to make sure that the drive with GRUB installed is higher priority in the bios, then use the boot menu.

To reinstall grub (on either or both drives), try this tutorial: http://ubuntuguide.net/how-to-restor...ws-xpvistawin7

Ubuntu on the 160GB drive.
win 7 on the 320GB drive.
Prior to this problem, you selected which operating system to boot through BIOS. I'll assume from your statements you usually had the win 7 drive set to first boot for your family members?

If I understand your situation correctly, you disconnect the Ubuntu drive and let the computer try to boot from the other (win 7) drive and get a Grub boot error? If that's your situation, then Grub is installed on the master boot record of your win 7 hard drive if it was connected during the updates. This may have been done in the update, don't know what updates you did, kernel, grub-update?

It would be helpful to know what the exact error you refer to is that's pretty vague.

If you have the win 7 Installation CD, you should be able to repair the win 7 bootloader to boot from its drive.

If you have not change the default than GRUB is written in MBR of SDA
You should us the Advance option in UBUNTU installer to change the default.

I think...

If you are using Ubuntu 6.10 as your initial post indicates, 6.10 should be using GRUB, not GRUB 2.

These might prove of use if you have not already run across them. Notice the Recovery Disk downloads for Vista and 7.

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBC...r+from+the+DVD

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php

http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=4

The correct version of the live-cd for GRUB should be 0.9799.

Tried before...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ration-434882/

double post

If your windows drive stopped booting after an update, presumably it's because grub was written to your windows drive, although it shouldn't have been. If this is the case as has been suggested, to go back to how things were previously, you can either install grub onto the windows drive as well as your linux drive, with a "timeout 0" option and booting windows as default:
(Make a new menu.lst and use the command:
# grub-install --no-floppy /dev/sdb - substituting sdb with whatever your windows disk is at the time. The other, probably preferable option is to use your windows cd to fix the MBR:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4836283_repair-mbr-windows.html

Though having to remember to press a keystroke while booting sounds a lot easier than having to change your bios settings before and after every boot.

Another option that would be unobtrusive to other users would be to boot off a pen drive which could be inserted when you want to boot linux.

I'm using 9.10 as the title states. Grub 2 is the default for 9.10.

That sounds about right. I am not sure about the updates, I just selected Install when the update manager popped up, and said updates were available.

As for the error when I disconnect the 160GB HDD (Ubuntu), and have just the 320GB (Windows 7), this is what I see:
So, as you said, Grub is installed on the master boot record of the Win 7 HD. I've tried disconnecting the 160GB drive (Ubuntu), and booting from my Windows 7 DVD, but am only able to get to the background of the login screen (without any option to actually login, or even restart, or anything.. just a login screen background displayed) if I start normally, and if I start in safe-mode, I get a safe-mode background, but am unable to do anything, ie: no start menu, ctrl-alt-delete does nothing, nothing is there but a background.

I suppose I'll check out thorkelljarl's suggestion after reading his post, and maybe even 3rdtreenz's post - because all would be viable solutions. However, I was quite happy changing boot options in BIOS, as I am the only one who will ever boot into Linux on this machine, and my wife/kids use it 95% of the time. This isn't a 'quick fix' solution in my opinion; it is the desired solution.

Anyway, as long as I can login to Windows and Linux without having to select each and every time the computer is started, I'll be happy.

By the way...

Have you used the command "fdisk -l" to look at the partitions for a boot flag?

6.10/9.10, I looked to the left where you are still 6.10, not to the right where you are 9.10 and made the reference just in case.

Super Grub Disk live-cd version should be 1.21 for Grub2.

Not sure what that's supposed to return, if anything, but it doesn't return any data for me.[/QUOTE]

I see. I initially thought you had a typo in your post, but I see I had 6.10 in my profile. I've changed it now, thanks.

I haven't tried messing around with Linux much since I got fed up with trying to get my monitor to display in its native resolution a couple years ago.

3rdtreenz's post about How to repair MBR on Windows 7 seemed like that would help, and should help, but as I said in the previous post, I can't get past the Windows 7 background screen, and no options to do anything... So, I'll try to configure Grub2 for dual booting, and take it from there.

You could use a GAG bootable CD to start windoze as described in the link below.

http://www.linuxrocks.in/joomla15/in...0&limitstart=4

/Magnus