Vista/Ubuntu Dual Boot

U

user_24092007

Member
Dear Sir,

I want to use Ubuntu and Vista on my Sony VGN FZ 140 laptop.
It has Core 2 Duo processor, 160 Gb SATA HDD and 2 Gb RAM.

I have studied your guide as mention in this link. http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Ubuntu

Already i have vista running. Initially i freed 50 % disk space for ubuntu installation using shrinking in computer management.

Then i have started ubuntu installation on my laptop, i finished neary 92 % ubuntu installation and got following error.

"Unable to install GRUB(hd0,3)
executing 'grub-install(hd0,3) failed
This is a fatal error"

Due to this error ubuntu installation is not completed and i restart my laptop, i could not find vista, but i get error 17, boot loader failed.

so i have to install vista using sony's rescue disk. This time vista installed on entire hard disk, now the vista is running fine.

But i could not install ubuntu and dual boot my laptop using your guide.

Please help me

Information regarding steps:--

I have completed step 3 and partition my one SATA HDD as below:

My drive partition information as below:

/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 ntfs /media/sda1 7460 MB
/dev/sda2 ntfs /media/sda2 92011 MB
/dev/sda3 reisert / 20475 MB
/dev/sda5 swap 5116 MB
/dev/sda6 fat32 /windows 34973 MB

here sda1 and sda2 are created by vista, sda1 is for rescue purpose whiel sda2 is for vista operating system.

After completing setp 4, i have done following corrections to install GRUB bootloader on ubuntu partition.

Advanced options
--> ticked this choise -- install boot loader
--> device for boot loader installation (hd0,3)

After this modification installation started, but it completed up to 92 % and showed above erroe message saying "This is a fatal error"

Kindly help me to avoid this error during successful installation of ubuntu and vista with dual boot.
 
Hi user, welcome to NST.

Set the GRUb installation point to (hd0,2), since partition counts start at 0, not 1.
 
Hi,As per your instruction, today i set the GRUb installation point to (hd0,2), in Advance option of the installation of stage of ubuntu.But installation failed these time with following errors,"Unable to install GRUB(hd0,2)executing 'grub-install(hd0,2) failedThis is a fatal error"i point out here that i have laptop and it has only one SCSI hard disk.Also i came to know that we can put /dev/sda3 instead of (hd0,2) in advance option during setup.I have tried it but failed for successful installation with following error."Unable to install GRUB in /dev/sda3executing 'grub-install /dev/sda3 failedThis is a fatal error"Also it was mentioned in your documentation that in linux, drive and partision start with zero, while in windows drive start with zero and partision start with one. So as per understanding it is correct, but i donot know why it is showing fatal error. Kindly help to overcome this problem as early as possible.
 
I too am having exactly the same issue :frowning:

gParted shows my drive as:

/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 EISA recovery Partition
/dev/sda2 Vista - Primary Partiton
/dev/sda3 Extended Partion
> /dev/sda5 Documents - Logical Partion
/dev/sda4 ubuntu/reiserfs Primary Partition (formatted each insall attempt)

Using either /dev/sda4 or (hd0,3) results in the same errror as user_24092007:

Executing 'grub-install /dev/sda4' failed

This is a fatal error.


The install reads:

The following partitions are going to be formatted:
Partition #4 of SCSI1 (0,0,0) sda as reiserfs

So (according to your guide), I should enter (hd0,0) however is this not the MBR/Recovery Partition? It certainly does not appear to be partition 4. Any help is much appreciated.
 
There is something wrong with the drive detection in Ubuntu/GParted that is not giving the right numbers and/or is not correctly installing GRUB to the correct location.

I've updated the Ubuntu documentation to use an alternative method, please try it and see if it does the trick.
 
I think you may have left a step out of the updated version, should I now not be installing the grub at all or should I be writing it to the MBR, then using easybcd to overwrite that again? thankyou for your help. :smile:
 
Yep, the latter - which is the default Ubuntu behavior so it needs no work on your behalf (and therefore needs no listing in the guide :smile:)
 
Thanks for your help, all is working as planned, if not the most intuitive way it does work. :smile:

3 hours of joy after that trying to get wireless to work and then I seem to have well and truely FUBAR'd ubuntu. Don't worry though, I shall go and bitch about this elsewhere...
 
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