Problematic dual boot

[Bruce Marshall]

On Tuesday 17 March 2009, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> What would you lot advise?  Or what would you do in my shoes?  If
> installing XP with the Kubuntu partition as it is now would indeed, as I
> suspect, muck up the MBR so that Kubuntu became inaccessible, how easy
> would that be to fix?  And how would I fix it?  And am I right in thinking
> that, with more memory his system would be powerful enough for VB.  The
> maximum RAM his board can handle is apparently 2 GB.

I wouldn't worry too much about messing the MBR.   If you google the problem, 
I think you will find in the Ubuntu pages the method to fix that problem.

It would involve running the live CD for Ubuntu (or Kubuntu) and reinstalling 
grub.

Not a big deal.   I just did a search for "reinstall grub to MBR" 

and came up with lots of hits....  including:

Restore GRUB quite simple in Ubuntu, instead going through all the "gain root 
access" and play with shell commands, you can use the Ubuntu installation CD 
to restore it without going through all kinds of hassles.

Here are the steps:

1. Boot your computer up with Ubunto CD
2. Go through all the process until you reech "[!!!] Disk Partition"
3. Select Manual Partition
4. Mount your appropriate linux partions

/
/boot
swap
.....

5. DO NOT FORMAT THEM.
6. Finish the manual partition
7. Say "Yes" when it asks you to save the changes
8. It will give you errors saying that "the system couldn't install ....." 
after that
9. Ignore them, keep select "continue" until you get back to the Ubuntu 
installation menu
10. Jump to "Install Grub ...."
11. Once it is finished, just restart your computer