Dual booting Vista and Hardy Heron

Hey, seems like most of the dual booting that I've been reading about consists of all the OS being on a single drive.

In my case, I have Vista installed on drive C: and Ubuntu installed on drive F: Originally, I installed Ubunut from within Vista which worked out fine. Had a nice dual boot menu (assuming grub but maybe not).

Anyway, all was well until one day Vista would no longer boot. So used Gpart to create a new partition and restored from backup. All good now EXCEPT my nice dual boot menu is gone, gone, gone......:S

So anyway, have been looking for a way to get the menu back so I can get back to Ubuntu. Ubuntu is still there but I can't figure out how to access it.

I thought I had found a solution with easybcd and maybe I have but if so, I haven't figured it out yet.

So have both Vista and Ubuntu already installed. Each on their own drive. Just looking for a boot menu that will allow me to boot to either system. Sounds simple, right? I'm sure it is but I haven't figured out how to do it yet. I don't even know what the executable is for starting up Ubuntu!

Anyone got any thoughts on how to proceed? BTW, I can see all my drives, Linux files from within Vista if that helps.

As with lots of folks, very familiar with Windows but can barely spell Lenux!

Appreciate any and all thoughts.

Thanks!
 
Thanks for the quick response.

Yes, I've read that page forward and backwards several times. The answer may be there staring me in the face but I guess I can't see the forest for the trees.

The closest I've come to having things work like they should is Vista boots up correctly from a menu while Ubuntu boots up to a line command. No GUI.

I've looked for the name of the executable required to boot ubuntu thinking if I could locate it, maybe I could figure out a way to manually update the menu script to include the boot command. I think I'm hitting all around it but just haven't quite figured out yet the best approach to resolving the problem.

I know it can be done. Just not sure where else to look. Hoping somebody here has been through this before.

Thanks again
 
Hello,

Please try the following. Remove the Linux Entry. Will most likely have to delete the NeoGRUB to do so. From there add a Linux entry. But this time check the box for GRUB is not loaded to the MBR.

Try that and see if it allows you to boot into Ubuntu.

Cheers,
Mak
 
If not, re-install GRUB or Ubuntu, ensure that it boots to the GUI, re-install the Vista bootloader to the MBR, and then use EasyBCD to re-add the entry. If you don't care which bootloader comes up first, a re-install of Ubuntu should automatically create the dual-boot for you anyway through GRUB if it finds the Vista install durning setup.
 
Ok, I tried checking the box for GRUB is not loaded to the MBR. I tried it two different ways. Once by selecting the HD itself and the second time, I selected the actual partition. Both appeared to give me the same result. When I select Ubuntu, it boots up to a grub "command line" prompt but still no gui.

It may be naive of me, but in the windows environment using BCD, there is an executable that starts up windows which is "winload.exe". There is no similar "start" command under the Ubuntu menu item in BCD. So is it that Ubuntu doesn't require a start command to startup or ?? What kicks off Ubuntu to startup? Whatever that is, is not in the menu as an executable. Maybe that's the problem.

I could always go back and start over with ubuntu but I have spent quite of time beating my head on the wall getting USB devices to work and printing (boy, there's a story). If I had documented everything I did, I could redo it. But at this point, it would be back to the drawing board and I sure hate to spend that much time again. May have to do that though if I can't find a way to make it work.

Thanks again for the ideas. If anyone else has any thoughts, it would be great to hear about them!
 
If you are using a live CD of Hardy, boot from it and use the terminal to re-install grub. If you choose to re-install grub to the mbr (rather then just to Ubuntu's partition), make sure it can boot Ubuntu before reinstalling the Vista bootloader and readding the entry for it in EasyBCD.
 
Thanks for the link. Very interesting reading. I purchased and downloaded one of the boot managers mentioned in the article OSL2000. Reading the description, sounded just like what I needed. Scans your PC on every boot-up to see what is sitting where. Bought it, downloaded it and it sees all my hard drives/partitions but doesn't recognize Ubuntu as being loaded. Boots right up in to Vista though....

I have sent a email to their tech support to see if they have any idea why their product doesn't recognize Ubuntu already installed.

Will let everyone know what they have to say.
 
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