Help with Dual Boot?

L

leahnc

Member
Ive tried following the online tutorials to have Vista boot first / but I must be missing something?

I installed Ubuntu without problems. When booting up I have 10 seconds to decide which OS to boot then Ubuntu boots if I dont do anything. Which is fine, but my husband uses Vista & prefers it to boot first

Ive downloaded Easy BCD in Vista, but it is my understanding I need to configure something in Ubuntu before using it? Can someone walk me thru this or point me to a tutorial that I can follow :??

Im brand new to this so any help is much appreciated!
 
Hi leahnc, welcome to NST.
What bootloader are you using to dual boot ? bootmgr from Vista or grub from Ubuntu ? (there should be a clue somewhere on the boot menu page)


Addendum:


If it's grub, you'll find a guide here. If it's bootmgr, then this is one of the things that Vista does provide you with a simple way of doing, that means you can manage without EasyBCD. (though it will also make it easy for you of course)
Control Panel \ System \Advanced system settings \ Advanced \ Startup and Recovery. Then choose the default OS from the dropdown list.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the quick response!

It is Grub

I will follow the link you sent me & post back to let you know if I figured things out!

Thanks for helping a Newbie! :smile:
 
I ran into the same problem here when seeing ubuntu load when booting from the other drive that was installed and saw the option to boot into Vista there. Grub would need to be configured to point at the Vista boot loader on the primary drive here.

On a system with Vista already on you install ubuntu onto a second partition being called the root/file system. The lve cd version of GParted is definitely preferred especially when Windows is on the same drive for seeing the Linux partition created and then pointing the ubuntu installer to see it formatted for use as the root and also setting it as the / mount point. Once ubuntu is on you simply add the new entry in with EasyBCD and point to the root there to see ubuntu load up without fuss.

Since Grub replaced the Vista mbr entries you now need to boot up with the Vista dvd and use the startup repair tool to see Vista running again first. When installing NeoGrub onto the Vista primary when using the Linux tab for creating the new entry check off the "Grub isn't installed into bootsector" box since this won't be needed. NeoGrub will still see ubuntu load by simply pointing at the root with the ubuntu Grub already installed there.
 
Its as simple as opening menu.lst with sudo in gedit and changing the "default 0" line to "default x" where x is the number to where the the Vista entry is located in the menu.
 
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