Dual Boot Linux/Windows 7
I've been a long time user of Ubuntu on my home desktop, but for some things you just need Windows. I downloaded the Windows 7 RC and got a key for it, and I'd like to dual-boot. I've tried several dual-boot guides, but I'm having trouble following them because of my odd partition layout. Here's how it appears in GParted:
- Drive 1:
-
/dev/sda1
: fat32 (Empty) -
/dev/sda2
: extended-
/dev/sda5
: ext3 (Ubuntu Root) -
/dev/sda6
: swap
-
-
- Drive 2:
-
/dev/sdb1
: ntfs (Windows 7) -
/dev/sdb2
: ext4 (Home Folder)
-
Whenever I try to boot Windows from GRUB, it says
Disk Error
Press any key to restart
I press the spacebar, and it takes me back to GRUB, from which I can boot Ubuntu just fine.
Here's the relevant part of my /boot/grub/menu.lst:
title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-15-generic
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-15-generic root=UUID=f039d530-b7a1-49f6-a5b7-37dc8f4c6ad2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-15-generic
quiet
title Windows 7
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
I mounted /dev/sda1, and inside I found three files:
- Boot (folder)
- bootmgr
- bootsect.bak
Am I missing something rather simple here? I'd rather not try and move partitions around, and I don't want Windows 7 on /dev/sda1
, because that partition is only 10 GB. Any help?
Solution 1:
Booting windows on drive2 is tricky - you might get grub to do it but it will cause problems in windows later.
Can you swap them so that Windows is the first drive?