Ultimate Edition Forum

I am still a newbie to Linux and I enjoy using it, however, I still need Windows for some applications.

I was runlning XP MCE on one HD and decided to install Ultimate 1.9 on another HD. A GRUB Loader was installed in the process. I even set up a 3rd HD, to try Ultimate 2.0, and a Grub Loader was installed in a different place. I subsequently became annoyed by the performance on my MCE and decided to install XP Pro on the HD that formerly was running Ultimate 2.

Now, I can boot XP from the HD with XP Pro on it, and see the other two HD's, but I do not know how to re setup a Grub Loader so I can Dual Boot between my new XP Pro and my Ultimate 1.9.

If I try to boot from the HD with MCE, the Grub Loader starts to load and gives me an error 21. I booted off the Ultimate 1.9 LiveCD and tried to find the partition containing the Grub Loader, on the HD with MCE, but it does not appear.

Can someone walk me through the steps to setup the Grub Loader to load these two OS's in Dual Boot. For the time being, I need the files in the MCE partition, on the HD with MCE, until I can back them up.

Once you install Windows after any other system it alters your boot loader. There is no grub anymore!!!
Re-install. For a multiple boot system with Windows, you have to install Windows first and then Linux.
The grub boot loader will recognize other operating systems and create the correct entries, Windows will not. Just to be on the safe side, you had better make a backup of your Windows install using this:
http://www.macrium.com/ and don't forget to make a recovery disc.
You are really making things difficult for yourself. Pick one hard drive for your operating systems and leave the others alone. Set up partitions on that drive and stick with that.
i.e. Partition the drive into 4 parts:
3 for operating systems and one for swap allowing enough space for each operating system.
Then you have the other hard drives to store data on without risk of losing anything but an operating system. Having operating systems on different hard drives just makes things too complicated. Just make sure that when you install you set the mount points for your other hard drives.
You can try supergrub but it is just as eay to re-install Linux(and just as fast).
p.s. There is software for Windows that will allow you full access to any Linux partition:
http://www.fs-driver.org/

I disconnected the other two drives before I installed XP Pro. I merely reconnected the other two drives after the install. The original HD with MCE on it still has a partition with the Grub loader on it. I spent quite a bit of time installing and tweaking Ultimate 1.9. I can't believe I have to reinstall it just to create another Grub Boot Loader. I should be able to edit the existing one and insert the correct parameters.

Well then go for it:
http://www.supergrubdisk.org/

I downloaded SuperGrubDisk and burned it to CD. I booted my PC with it and I was able to manually bring up my original Grub menu and boot Ultimate 1.9.

I am not sure how to my new XP Pro install to the Grub menu, but at least I have a temporary way to boot Ultimate.

You didn't bork your grub, what happened was when you reconnected your drives the drive order got switched around and grub was looking for the right OS on the wrong drive.
If you know what you're doing it's a 5 minute fix by editing your grub list to reflect the new drive order.
If you don't, I would suggest you use the Ultimate Edition live DVD to fix grub and make it see the new drive order.
Will prolly take you longer to find where the fix is posted here in the forum, than it will to run the fix.
It was written by cowboy if that helps. Never mind, I had copied it to my HD

CowBoy wrote:Boot to your Ultimate, or Hardy, or whatever LiveCD capable disk, open a terminal window, enter the following commands one at a time....

sudo grub

> find /boot/grub/stage1

> root (hd0,0) (or whatever above command lists)

> setup (hd0)

> quit

Then reboot and you should have grub back.

Thanks to each of you!!

Since I am already in Ultimate 1.9, can I open a Terminal Window and run these commands from there?

It worked perfectly from the Terminal Window in Ultimate. I was able to boot into Ultimate without error. I will try to boot into XP Pro, next.

Well back in the "EIDE" days and earlier, their were little "jumpers" on the back of the Hard disk Drive. Tese were to help the bios and mother board figure out which drive had the priority on boot. the settings were usually.

:::: <--- pins in open position usually = master or single drive
|::: <-- first set of pins connected = Master
:: <--- Second set = slave
::|:<-- Third set = Cable select
:::| <-- fourth set = " I may need my jumper again so I don't wanna lose it"

well after that brief overview just wanted to help for future reference been more than a few time I just slapped a hard drive in a drive bay rip roaring and ready to go and wondered WTF my hard drive go??? untill I realize that jumpers weren't set correctly and it wasn't recognized or the bios and motherboard were pointed to the wrong hard drive for the OS.

Thank you!!

I have been involved in IT since 1985, but mostly Windows and Dos. Not any Linux. I retired in 2003 and recently became fascinated with Ubuntu.

My PC is an HP MCE m7060n 3Ghz P4, 2Gb ram, and 3 SATA HD's. I found that I could hit F12, when I boot the PC, and choose which HD to boot from. I just did not know how to make the Grub Loader work again.

I originally had XP MCE on one HD and just data on the others. When I first installed Ubuntu, it put the Grub Loader on the HD with MCE. Later, I installed Ultimate 2.0, on another HD.

Wanting to install XP Pro in place of Ultimate 2.0, I disconnected the other two HD's and just left the one connected. After I installed XP Pro, I had a need to hook up the HD with MCE on it so I could copy over files to XP Pro. When I booted the PC, the Grub menu would start to load and fail with an error 21. I had seen that before when helping a friend install Ubuntu on an External HD connected by a USB cable.

It was then that I realized I had to hit F12, every time I booted, to ensure that my system at least booted up with XP Pro.

After I discovered the Super Grub Disk, I was able to boot with that and choose to boot from Ultimate 1.9. Before I got too familiar with the Super Grub Disk, someone suggested entering Grub, from Terminal, and using that to ReDo the existing Grub Loader. I was then able to edit Menu.lst and properly Title each menu choice on the Grub Menu.

Now everything works just fine.

If only I could get Ultimate to recognize my Nvidia Gforce 8400GS card, I could output to my HDTV and also run Google Earth. Because I have an Integrated Intel Graphics adapter on my PC, I installed the 8400GS PCI card. It works fine with Windows, but I cannot boot and version of Linux without setting the Default Video, in the PC BIOS, to Onboard. Ubuntu will then boot, but it requires that the monitor be connected to the Onboard adapter. When I boot from Windows, however, it detects the Nvidia card and automatically switches over to the Nvidia card and runs the Nvidia driver. Ubuntu will not do that.

There is no way to disable the Onboard Intel Adapter. Setting the BIOS Video default to PCI is the only other choice and when I do that, Linux will not boot. It just Hangs, no matter what version.