Hi all, I am going to be installing ubuntu on the second of two drives in my hp pavilion dv8040 (the first drive is xp pro)...I've used linux a bit, but only actually installed it once before (And that was 7 years ago - and it wasn't a dual boot situation)...I'm worried that it might affect my windows installation and I don't want to screw that up...Normally I'd have no problem just pressing ahead but in this particular situation, I just really do not want to screw up my windows drive...What will it do when it goes to set up the dual-boot?
Any tips/advice you can give me would be greatly appreciated...Thanx!
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
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Jump to PostGrub is the bootloader. It lives in the first few sectors of the disk and it is what the pc looks for when it boots up. It will give you the option to boot either XP or Ubuntu
If it goes wrong all is not lost as it can …
Jump to Postyou get to choose. Usually it goes on the first disk.
e.gPC BOOTS UP
BIOS CHECKS HDD1
BIOS READS MBR
BIOS SEES GRUB IN MNR
GRUB SHOWS OS CHOICES
(YOU CLICK ON XP)
GRUB LOADS THE XP BOOTLOADER
THE XP BOOTLOADER STARTS XP
Jump to Postand if it does hurt it, you just need to stick in your xp cd and type a simple command which will delete grub and reinstall the stock xp bootloader.
also DO NOT install grub if your PC relies on a recovery paritition instead of OS media as it …
Jump to Postuh, no there not.
my server has SCSI disks and they are called SDx
Jump to Postand in relation to wireless yeah, i have a realtek card and it worked fine with 6.10 but not 7.04. I think its because they changed the networkmanager
All 20 Replies
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
Ok, so after some searching, I found this link...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How_to_dual-boot_Ubuntu_and_XP_after_installing_them_separately_on_two_HDs?highlight=%28dual-boot%29
however, I've read stuff about ?grub? being installed in the MBR and I'm afraid how that will affect my windows drive...I guess I just need someone to tell me that this link is right before I go ahead with this...anyone have any experience with this?
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
Grub is the bootloader. It lives in the first few sectors of the disk and it is what the pc looks for when it boots up. It will give you the option to boot either XP or Ubuntu
If it goes wrong all is not lost as it can be fixed (but you will need your XP cd)
Warning: If you have a recovery partition instead of a windows cd then DO NOT install linux !
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
Which disk will grub live on? the first disk with xp, or the second one with linux?
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
you get to choose. Usually it goes on the first disk.
e.g
PC BOOTS UP
BIOS CHECKS HDD1
BIOS READS MBR
BIOS SEES GRUB IN MNR
GRUB SHOWS OS CHOICES
(YOU CLICK ON XP)
GRUB LOADS THE XP BOOTLOADER
THE XP BOOTLOADER STARTS XP
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
So it shouldn't hurt xp if grub is in the mbr for the disk that xp is on?
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
>So it shouldn't hurt xp if grub is in the mbr for the disk that xp is on?
No.
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
and if it does hurt it, you just need to stick in your xp cd and type a simple command which will delete grub and reinstall the stock xp bootloader.
also DO NOT install grub if your PC relies on a recovery paritition instead of OS media as it will most likely destroy it.
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
Ok, so after some searching, I found this link...
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/How_to_dual-boot_Ubuntu_and_XP_after_installing_them_separately_on_two_HDs?highlight=%28dual-boot%29
The tutorial has one or two minor inaccuracies, such as this one:
If your Windows is on a second SATA you have to use sd1 instead of hd1, I think.
Wrong. They're both referred to as hdx, and the numbers are in the hard drives' boot order.
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
Ok, thanks guys! I went ahead and installed it...everything went pretty well and grub works just fine - no problems that I've found yet with my xp install...
Ubuntu had a problem with my wireless card, but I've read in forums that it's a common problem, so I'll just have to mess with it and see if I can come up with anything...
Once again, thanks or all your help!
Solved!
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
uh, no there not.
my server has SCSI disks and they are called SDx
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
and in relation to wireless yeah, i have a realtek card and it worked fine with 6.10 but not 7.04. I think its because they changed the networkmanager
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
My wireless card is a broadcom and my wired is a realtek...it didn't have a problem with the realtek, but my wireless is acting screwy...
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
i meant to say that i had a Realtek wireless card. Are you running ubuntu 6.06 LTS or 7.04 Fiesty ?
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
>my server has SCSI disks and they are called SDx
I forgot about SCSI. But IDE and SATA both use hdx.
Oh, and I'm glad that the Ubuntu install went OK. Installing wireless drivers aren't too difficult unless you have to compile them from source as a kernel module.
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
I'm running feisty...have yet to get started on the wireless problem...I'll let you know what I come up with...
Infarction 503 Posting Virtuoso
>my server has SCSI disks and they are called SDx
I forgot about SCSI. But IDE and SATA both use hdx.
My SATA showed up as sda back when I had Linux on it...
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
thats what i said.
IDE and SATA are hd(x). Scsi is sd(x)
Ive noticed that some flash keys come up as sd(x)
John A 1,896 Vampirical Lurker Team Colleague
>My SATA showed up as sda back when I had Linux on it...
Are you referring to Linux devices, or GRUB's naming conventions? For example, I found this:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml?part=1&chap=10
The most critical part of understanding GRUB is getting comfortable with how GRUB refers to hard drives and partitions. Your Linux partition /dev/hda1 (for IDE drives) or /dev/sda1 (for SATA/SCSI drives) will most likely be called (hd0,0) under GRUB. Notice the parentheses around the hd0,0 - they are required.
Hard drives count from zero rather than "a" and partitions start at zero rather than one. Be aware too that with the hd devices, only hard drives are counted, not atapi-ide devices such as cdrom players and burners. Also, the same construct is used with SCSI drives. (Normally they get higher numbers than IDE drives except when the BIOS is configured to boot from SCSI devices.) When you ask the BIOS to boot from a different hard disk (for instance your primary slave), that harddisk is seen as hd0.
Assuming you have a hard drive on /dev/hda, a cdrom player on /dev/hdb, a burner on /dev/hdc, a second hard drive on /dev/hdd and no SCSI hard drive, /dev/hdd7 gets translated to (hd1,6). It might sound tricky and tricky it is indeed, but as we will see, GRUB offers a tab completion mechanism that comes handy for those of you having a lot of hard drives and partitions and who are a little lost in the GRUB numbering scheme.
ft3ssgeek -1 Junior Poster
ok, guys, I found a great howto:
http://freeshells.ch/~jargoman/ndiswrapper.html
It worked perfectly and I am now writing this from my new linux installation over wireless...hope this helps someone...
jbennet 1,618 Most Valuable Poster Team Colleague Featured Poster
yeah ndiswrapper was wha I was going to reccomend next.
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