[ubuntu-uk] Ubuntu install to USB and existing XP

[Steve Miller]

Hi there,

I've had a play with 7.10 and it looks very good indeed; a lot of hard 
work has gone into creating it and it works very well indeed. 

There seems to be a problem though for XP users who download the CD and 
attempt to install it on an external USB device, either a disk or a 
flash key, using a machine where there *already exists* a working copy 
of Windows on the first internal IDE drive.  Essentially, the install to 
the USB device works just fine until right at the end when GRUB, usually 
complaining first about the cylinders on the USB partition being more 
than 1024 from start, dumps all over the existing Windows boot.

I can see how and why this is happening; there are a number of ways 
around it (I used Syslinux in the end) but I'm worried that a typical XP 
user, who won't be able to recover from this, isn't going to be too 
delighted.  The installed Ubuntu won't boot and neither will XP anymore, 
so the large amount of help and advice about what to do isn't even 
available.  There does seem to be a large demand for installing  7.10 
into this configuration and perhaps there should be a clear warning 
somewhere *before* it's attempted?

I just wondered what you guys thought?

Cheers, Steve