<html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div><br></div><div><br>On 28 Jan 2011, at 07:09, Will Bickerstaff <<a href="mailto:will.bickerstaff@gmail.com">will.bickerstaff@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><div></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 9:55 PM, Neil Greenwood <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:neil.greenwood.lug@gmail.com"><a href="mailto:neil.greenwood.lug@gmail.com">neil.greenwood.lug@gmail.com</a></a>></span> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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<br>
</div>Apparently, it's not a problem with the installation process of either<br>
Windows or Ubuntu. There are some recent Vista and Windows 7 programs<br>
that implement their copy-protection by writing to an "unused" portion<br>
of the boot sector. At least, it's unused by Windows, LILO and Grub 1.<br>
However, it's a fairly vital part of the Grub 2 installation.<br>
<br>
Also, the Windows program keeps writing to that part of the disk every<br>
time you boot into Windows. So your whole computer fails to reboot<br>
every time you use Windows. Which stops it being a dual-boot machine.<br>
<br>
There was a post about the problem on Planet Ubuntu by the Grub 2<br>
maintainer. I'm afraid I've forgotten his name, since it was a few<br>
months ago now.<br>
<br>
Hope this clears up the mystery.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>That's absolutely spot on (Bug #441941) heres the link to his blog post with some tips on how you can help identify what the 'nasties' are doing <a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/debian/2010-08-28-windows-applications-making-grub2-unbootable.html"><a href="http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/debian/2010-08-28-windows-applications-making-grub2-unbootable.html">http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/ucgi/~cjwatson/blosxom/debian/2010-08-28-windows-applications-making-grub2-unbootable.html</a></a></div>
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</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div><span>-- </span><br><span><a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a></span><br><span><a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a></span><br><span><a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a></span><br></div></blockquote><br><div>I'm surprised that it didn't work, shortly after I purchased my Inspiron 15 (granted it was about a year an half ago so may be an older model), within the first few month I shrunk the Win7 volume on the laptop, and loaded Ubuntu on the free space - and everything worked perfectly.</div><div><br></div><div>This may have been a bit out of date, since I did it a while ago, though.</div><div><br></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><br><br>Regards,<div><br></div><div>Liam Gallear</div></span></body></html>