Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Usage and Setup Help => Topic started by: Snake X on February 02, 2012, 07:29:26 pm
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Well I knew I wouldn't be able to explain this no matter how hard I tried so I took some pictures from what I did. I downloaded Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 64 bit and burned it on a dvd. Popped it in and rebooted. Before I begin showing/telling what's wrong, I need to tell that I have 2 hard drives. One is 500 GB which is my windows 7 drive that I use, and the other is a 320 GB hard drive that was my backup but deleted to install ubuntu on and both are internal. Now, I went through the setup process and selected this option:
(http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg109/scaled.php?server=109&filename=step1md.jpg&res=medium)
I selected this option because I did *NOT* want to partition my windows hard drive in any way, because I wanted to completely install it on the external without touching my windows drive in any way shape or form.
At the very end, I got the final confirmation step (though I don't know how important it will be, but I took it anyways)
(http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg339/scaled.php?server=339&filename=step2td.jpg&res=medium)
So I let it install completely without skipping anything and I let it boot up. I forgot why I rebooted, but I did, then I knew that I wanted to uninstall it completely and right away because this is exactly what I DID NOT want to happen:
(http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg7/scaled.php?server=7&filename=step3wj.jpg&res=medium)
Great. Ubuntu partitioned my hard drive when I selected the OTHER hard drive that was NOT the 500 GB one and I EXACTLY did NOT want a boot menu. I didn't know what to do at this point, but I tried deleting and reformatting my external hard drive via disk manager or something:
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/7871/step4g.png)
I selected delete on "Disk 1" which is the 320 GB drive that supposedly had ubuntu installed on it. I rebooted it and I was greeted by the same freaking menu. I just want to COMPLETELY uninstall it and get my windows drive the way I had it because I didnt want to go through that menu every single time I booted and it automatically chooses ubuntu if I don't do anything which is really bad for me since I mostly boot up my computer then leave for a min or two. Ok, what I need help doing is is completely getting rid of this and going back to a single windows operating system without ubuntu so that I can unplug the windows drive from my computer to truly install it on the external without doing some weird partition or whatnot.
>:( First time I didn't like ubuntu :-\
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The boot menu lies in the MBR, so you have to get a Windows installation DVD and restore its MBR so you can get Windows' boot menu back.
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to me it looks like everything played out perfectly normally. ubuntu was indeed installed on the 320 gb disk, and windows was left on the 500. you can see this as windows lists the second disk as unused, because it doesn't recognise ext4.
like juju said, GRUB is installed in the MBR (Master Boot Record), so it was necessary to overwrite the windows bootloader for ubuntu to run.
how were you planning on booting into either ubuntu or wondows without GRUB's menu to select the one you wanted? if all you want is for windows to be the default, then it's easy enough to change it's config files to do so.
EDIT: if you want to make windows the default boot option, edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg and change
set default="0"
to
set default="4"
(i think it should be 4, given the screenshots, but you can count yourself to double check. all the options are listed in the file below there, headed with
menuentry <whatever>
you'd have to have it still installed, though, of course.
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You could try repairing the MBR with the windows install disk or equivalent (like Hiren's Boot CD). I think what you want is a completely portable installation of Ubuntu, like the one on this page http://www.pendrivelinux.com/creating-an-ubuntu-live-usb-from-cd/
The version in the link does not save your work but there is another version with persistence (for external HDD and such, as flash memory wears out quicker) on the website somewhere. I've done it before and it works out quite well. Unfortunately, this is as much as I can help you with because I did this a few years ago.
This would be the version you want if you don't want the boot menu to show every time, but boot Ubuntu when your external drive is plugged in
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Yes, as mentioned by shmibs, your screenshots show that Ubuntu did exactly what you asked for: installing on the second HDD :)
You don't need to destroy the GRUB MBR installed by Ubuntu (which was necessary for your computer to be able to launch Ubuntu on the external drive !), as GRUB is perfectly able to launch Windows. It's easy to configure it to launch Windows by default, and it's also easy to set a low timeout: check online documentation ;)
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Everything went fine, why would you not want a boot menu? I think you just messed it afterwards...
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I think, he wants the bootloader only to be on /dev/sdb1.
This is not so hard to do, but you will first need to restore the MBR of windows (with the advice of the people above).
Then, just go install Ubuntu like you did before. During the installation there will be somewhere button named "Advanced" or "Bootloader options" (I don't remember exactly).
When you click on it you should see two checkboxes (bot selected) with the labels /dev/sda and /dev/sdb. Deselect /dev/sda. Continue your install.
Now the bootloader should only be on /dev/sdb.
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well I fixed it actually
reformatted external and followed this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1014708
But thanks though :)