boot problem

omeletduefro · 10-12-2010, 08:04 PM

i recently installed ubuntu on an external hdd. i tried turning on my laptop w/o the hdd connected and when it went to boot it gave me an error saying that it couldnt find grub. all i wanted to do was boot into windows 7. is there anyway to set it up so i can just boot off my main hdd for windows and use the bios and choose to boot off my external to boot grub and choose what i want to boot like say linux?

rkski · 10-12-2010, 09:38 PM

It looks like you installed grub on the MBR of your internal hdd with second stage on your external.
You need to 'fix mbr' on your main drive to get windows to load again. Then install grub to the external hdd with a rescue CD. After, to boot linux again you change BIOS order to boot off external.

omeletduefro · 10-12-2010, 10:53 PM

wow im mad i didnt even think of that. okay i fixed mbr and now im working on installing grub onto my external using a bootable grub cd. hopefully everything gets sorted out

tommcd · 10-12-2010, 11:18 PM

Here is a good tutorial on reinstalling grub2:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr...ing%20GRUB%202
Just use the first method that is listed there. It should work fine.
To install grub2 to the MBR of your external hard drive, make sure you choose the correct drive. If you have 2 hard drives, one internal and one external, the external drive should be listed as /dev/sdb. You can confirm this by running: "sudo fdisk -l" from the terminal on the live CD and choosing the external drive.