Installing multiple OS

tahrenyie85 · 12-20-2007, 11:52 AM

Hi, I am now using windows xp. I just installed Ubuntu v7.10. But after I restart my laptop, an error occur. It said Grubloader error 18. What does it meant? I have a 160Gb hardisk, so i set 24.4Gb for c:, which is for windows. d: for storing files. e: for swap and f: for /root. is there any problem with this?

pljvaldez · 12-20-2007, 12:03 PM

You might need a BIOS update. Error 18 generally means you installed grub's files outside of the known disk area. This happens on old machines with drives bigger than about 8GB.

Alternatively, you could create a small /boot partition (100MB or so) at the front of the drive and that should do it.

tahrenyie85 · 12-20-2007, 12:07 PM

Oic, then i will create a new drive for /boot as c drive. and my current c drive to d drive, right. can i install linux just in 1 partition? or is it better to split to multiple partition?

pljvaldez · 12-20-2007, 12:10 PM

Any number of partitions is fine. If I'm dual booting, I typically only make three partitions: /boot at the beginning of the drive, / (including /home and all the directories except /boot), and a separate fat32 partition to share files between linux and windows.

I like to have /boot separate (at the front of the drive), because then if I delete the linux install, I can still use grub to boot Windows. Otherwise I have to use a windows disk to repair the master boot record.

tahrenyie85 · 12-20-2007, 12:15 PM

oh. I once do like that. But i change the staring drive from vfat32 to ntfs.

pljvaldez · 12-20-2007, 12:25 PM

You can certainly try using NTFS for the shared files drive. Linux write support to NTFS is much better than it used to be. I haven't really dual booted in quite some time...

tahrenyie85 · 12-20-2007, 12:29 PM

Ok, thx for ur guidance.