# Dual boot Vista and Kubuntu



## brianr (Apr 9, 2007)

Hello,
i'm a newbie to linux and i'm trying to dual boot my laptop with Vista/kubuntu. I successfully installed Kubuntu, but now i cannot boot into vista. i've updated the menu.lst file with vista, but have not had any luck. 
side notes:
i have a laptop with 55GB hard drive. I had vista on the number 2 partition (~45GB) and a recovery partion (number 1 partition). I formatted the recovery partition and that's where linux is installed (I say this because I'm not sure what the menu.lst file is supposed to look like, but i've tried different variations without any luck).

Thanks
Brian


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## justo (Dec 29, 2006)

Until a master tech comes along you may want to look at this.I run into the problem too because I reload a lot of PCs every week and mess up. >> http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/ You download the ISO and burn it to a CD. If you don't know how them ask here.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

brian -
Are you sure that first partition was recovery? I don't know anything about Vista, but every XP machine we ever talked about here on the forums had the recovery part at the tail end of the HDD. If there was a partititon before the OS in XP it usually had something to do with XP Media Center.
If you've got a Recovery CD, maybe the best thing to do right now is just reinstall Windows. 

Hope you didn't have too much personal data on there. 

Wait, if you do have personal data, get ahold of a SimplyMepis or PCLOS Live CD. You can copy data on Windows partitions to a USB thumb drive or USB external drive while running from the LiveCD environment. I just did it the other day. Mepis and PCLOS both have a program called KwikDisk, where you can mount Windows partitions without having to drop to the terminal. 

You know what, I'm not sure that Kubuntu doesn't have KwikDisk, but I got the impression from the Ubuntu Forums that you have to manually mount the drives via the command line. Even with several printed out directions I had trouble, so popped in a Mepis LiveCD and things went smoother from there.

Once you've recovered your personal data, you could just reinstall Windows and try again. After doing a little bit more research :grin:


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

justo, I found this website while googling your situation a little bit - I'm on dialup so didn't delve into their guides but might be helpful if you start over again

http://apcmag.com/5162/the_definitive_dual_booting_guide_linux_vista_and_xp


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## justo (Dec 29, 2006)

Thanks Bartender.That should help me.I have been double loading Linux lately on two computers here just to try some versions out but sometimes I add one and loose the first load.I am not very careful and just hope the second Linux lands where it is suppose to.If I had XP on the drive I would be worried a lot about permits to reload.


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Hi, justo -
Hey, sorry, I meant to address that last post to the OP. You were probly wondering why I put your name at the beginning. Got a little mixed up.


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## brianr (Apr 9, 2007)

bartender, justo,
thanks for the replys. I've been on the road for work and haven't had time to take a look at this. I'm currently downloading the Mepis iso and i'll give that a try. I've already been to the install site at apcmag and I did exactly what was there. I'm pretty sure my recovery being the first partition because I remember thinking that it was a bit strange. My laptop came with Vista from Dell and it had all the crap associated with it. My laptop was so slow that I reinstalled Vista on the same partition where it existed from Dell.

justo,
that link you sent isn't coming up - are you sure it's correct?

Thanks
Brian


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## brianr (Apr 9, 2007)

i may be in bigger trouble than i thought. i just ran the df command and got this output:

[email protected]:/home/brian# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 55280924 2846408 49626356 6% /
varrun 452096 96 452000 1% /var/run
varlock 452096 0 452096 0% /var/lock
procbususb 452096 104 451992 1% /proc/bus/usb
udev 452096 104 451992 1% /dev
devshm 452096 0 452096 0% /dev/shm
lrm 452096 25828 426268 6% /lib/modules/2.6.20-12-generic/volatile

Looks like Windows is totally gone...

Brian


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## hal8000 (Dec 23, 2006)

All df shows is mounted file systems.

In your case you hae installed linux to the first primary partition of your SATA hard drive on your labtop.

Post the output of this command

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

(thats "l" as in "list")

and also the output of

sudo cat /etc/fstab

and also 

sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst


You should not have installed to partition 1, this is the recovery partition,
partition 2 will be Vista (intact I think).
You should have shrunk the Vista NTFS partition and then with the free space
created an extended partition to install linux into. Ideally the extended partition should be split into 3 partitions, a /, a /home and a /swap partition.
Creating 1 partition is not good practise as if the partition becomes corrupted you lose everything and have to reinstall linux:- having said that linux filesystems are pretty robust and can take a lot of user abuse.


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## brianr (Apr 9, 2007)

hal8000,
thanks for the help...

[email protected]:/home/brian# fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 6992 56163208+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 6993 7296 2441880 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 6993 7296 2441848+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[email protected]:/home/brian# cat /etc/fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=0baf85cb-a8db-46a7-b4f6-c50133539daa / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=1b88e3b6-35f5-4682-b5c1-4193b92f7d4e none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0


## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-12-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-12-generic root=UUID=0baf85cb-a8db-46a7-b4f6-c50133539daa ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-12-generic
quiet
savedefault

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-12-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-12-generic root=UUID=0baf85cb-a8db-46a7-b4f6-c50133539daa ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-12-generic

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet


title Windows Vista
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST


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## hal8000 (Dec 23, 2006)

brianr said:


> hal8000,
> thanks for the help...
> 
> [email protected]:/home/brian# fdisk -l /dev/sda
> ...



This isn't good news, Im afraid.

Your partition table does not include primary partition 2; primary partition 2 is now an extended partition (i.e. a container for logical drives) which was Vista, worse still
partition 1 which probably contained Vista drivers, now contains your Ubuntu / filesystem

Grub, starts counting at 0 (primary partition 1) and when you look at your windows stanza, it correctly loads Vista:
title Windows Vista
root (hd0,1)
....or it would do if sda2 were a ntfs filesystem.

When it comes to installing any linux system, and setting up the partitions, you must choose expert mode or custom, only by choosing this method can you take control of the install process, most distros will install to the full hard disk by default (which they state in the help of the partitioning screen).
Unless anyone else has an idea you will have to reinstall Vista from the CD or DVD disk again...sorry.


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## stuffour (Apr 26, 2007)

I have also got a Dell laptop with Vista already installed.It has a primary NTFS partition of 80GB and this is where Vista was installed. I want to repartition and install Kubuntu without reinstalling Vista and messing up my laptop.Can anyone pls provide me with a step by step procedure?


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## Bartender (Jun 10, 2005)

Try this website. I haven't attempted to follow any of their guides, but they seem to have done their homework.


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