Install Ubuntu on a system that already has windows XP

['Forum Post]

I've had problems with the functionnality we are discussing here.

Before attempting to install Ubuntu, I had four partitions on one 60 GB
HD.

3 of those partitions were NTFS and one was FAT32.
One of those partitions contained Win XP Pro. I think it was a
different NTFS partition that was flagged as bootable.

(I know, it was all very odd).

So, in other words:

c: bootable, ntfs, contains data
d: ntfs, contains windows xp
e: ntfs, contains data
f: fat32, contains data

Then I tried to install Ubuntu 5.10. Since I had no unpartitionned
space on my HD, I chose to resize the partition that contained Windows
( d: ).

Then I installed Ubuntu and I was asked to install grub in order to
dual-boot between XP and Ubuntu. Of course, I chose to do so.

But when I finally tried to reboot, it never worked ! The Ubuntu
installation process couldn't get it right. Later, I tried to fix the
problem with the Win XP Recovery mode but only screwed it up some more
and eventually had to reinstall Windows (and format d:, lost some
data... grrr... ).

Then, I tried again to reinstall Ubuntu and it did the same thing,
would not boot.

This time I managed to save the Windows thing by resetting the bootable
flags using fdisk and messing aroung with the windows recovery mode (I
don't know exactly what worked).

All this to say... does anyone have a clue why it doesn't want to work
?

All I can think of is, since Ubuntu is installed on /dev/hda7, it may
be more difficult to boot because it is over the 4th partition or
because it is like 50 GB or so into the HD... but if that's a problem,
I think the installer should not have attempted to install grub that
way.

Anyways, I still haven't managed to boot into Ubuntu with all this
because the installer can't make it happen. Does anybody have an idea ?

Thank you for reading this quite lengthy message.


-- 
jimbopouliot