Best Way to Dual-Boot Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10
- Thread starter mxcrowe
- Start date
Finally figured the issues i was having with EasyBCD not loading Ubuntu 9.10 x64.
The Ubuntu 9.10 formatted my 3rd physical drive (2 Tb Hitachi) with GPT
It seems EasyBCD (Grub4Dos that comes with it) is unable to load the EXT4 partition on a drive with GPT (even the newest EasyBCD).
I couldn't easily format the drive with MBR partition. I tried it with both win7 and ParagonPartitionManager10. The format would complete successfully but somehow Ubuntu 9.10 would either not recognize the newly formatted scheme or during installation revert back to GPT (not quite sure how this was happening). Very frustrating.
So I used my older OpenSuse11.1 DVD to format the disk. Basically i went to through the install process until it gets to partition portion. Used expert partitioning, deleted existing partition on my 3rd physical disk. Then used the 'new partition table' to create a EXT3 (OpenSuse 11.1 did not support EXT4), and SWAP partition. At this point the installer asks whether i wanted to change the GPT disk to MSDOS disk. I confirmed and proceeded. Long way to get my disk back to MBR. If anyone has a better way i would love to learn it.
Next step was to boot with Ubuntu 9.10 x64 disk and go through the installation, just format the EXT3 partition with EXT4. The disk stays with MBR. EasyBCD is able to dual boot my Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10.
Hope this helps others!
The Ubuntu 9.10 formatted my 3rd physical drive (2 Tb Hitachi) with GPT
It seems EasyBCD (Grub4Dos that comes with it) is unable to load the EXT4 partition on a drive with GPT (even the newest EasyBCD).
I couldn't easily format the drive with MBR partition. I tried it with both win7 and ParagonPartitionManager10. The format would complete successfully but somehow Ubuntu 9.10 would either not recognize the newly formatted scheme or during installation revert back to GPT (not quite sure how this was happening). Very frustrating.
So I used my older OpenSuse11.1 DVD to format the disk. Basically i went to through the install process until it gets to partition portion. Used expert partitioning, deleted existing partition on my 3rd physical disk. Then used the 'new partition table' to create a EXT3 (OpenSuse 11.1 did not support EXT4), and SWAP partition. At this point the installer asks whether i wanted to change the GPT disk to MSDOS disk. I confirmed and proceeded. Long way to get my disk back to MBR. If anyone has a better way i would love to learn it.
Next step was to boot with Ubuntu 9.10 x64 disk and go through the installation, just format the EXT3 partition with EXT4. The disk stays with MBR. EasyBCD is able to dual boot my Win7 and Ubuntu 9.10.
Hope this helps others!
