cant dual boot ubuntu linux :(

[mrweirdo]

Posted about this at the ubuntu forums allready but I'm trying to get as many ideas as posible so anyways I went and installed ubuntu linux on a drive in a removable bay inside my system(secondary drive on secondary ide cable). I didnt want to even mess with my main windows drive(primary on primary ide cable) so I wound up disconecting the windows drive from my system while I installed ubuntu. Anyways here is my problem now I want to be able to do a dual boot using boot.ini. I searched google and found some instructions on how to do it so I created the ubuntu.bin in ubuntu and copyied it over to my windows drive. Then I added
C:\ubuntu.bin="Ubuntu"
in boot.ini as a boot option. So then I restart my system this time with both drives hooked up and enabled through bios. Now If i chose this new option I allways get a blank screen if i try to boot ubuntu. The only way to boot ubuntu still is by disabling my main hard drive in my bios.

Any ideas on how to get this working?

 

[bersl2]

I've always found the NT bootloader to be inconvenient to use at best. It's much easier to chainload Windows from LILO or GRUB, as it doesn't involve creating images, and those bootloaders have the capability to load other OS as more than an afterthought.

 

[hopejr]

I used the NT loader to boot linux before. It worked fine for me (that was with Fedora 1 and Mandrake 10.0). The problem is that you disconnected your other drive. Your boot loader is probably configured to load hda1, but it's not on hda1. Instead it's hdb1 or whatever it is. So your ubuntu.bin file is wrong. Reinstall ubuntu with the windows drive plugged in, make sure it doesn't overwrite your mbr, and then try making a new ubuntu.bin file. It will work then.

 

[nweaver]

I would say use Grub to dual boot. It's such a better bootloader, and easier to fix then the windows one. (IMHO)

 

[mrweirdo]

well I just wound up going ahead and resintalling ubuntu and loading hte grub boat loader. I should probably have done that in the first place anyways its working fine now

 

[bersl2]

Originally posted by: hopejr
I used the NT loader to boot linux before. It worked fine for me (that was with Fedora 1 and Mandrake 10.0).

So have I. Grabbing an image of the boot sector and copying it over to a FAT partition, then booting Windows to copy the file from the FAT partition to the NTFS partition, every time I need to make a change, is not my idea of convenience and efficiency.

Being able to name a partition as a file (NT's device naming idea doesn't cut it) facilitates things greatly.