Dual Boot with windows: where to put the boot loader?

[Erich Reto Iseli]

Hi all,

Thanks everybody for the good advice. I installed grub into the MBR and 
everything worked fine. However, I had to choose ext3 over xfs otherwise 
it only wanted to install lilo. And sorry for Lilo fans but I really 
cant stand this loader. So does anyone know why the ubuntu installer 
doesn't give you the option to install grub in the mbr if you choose 
xfs? You can choose grub but then it warns you if you install it on an 
xfs disk, you might get in trouble. Ok, but no option to install in the 
mbr. It defaulted to lilo. When I saw this, I turned off the computer, 
installed again and chose ext3 instead :)

So now ubuntu is installed on my dad's computer, but he cannot use it 
yet because X wouldn't come up. He has a no-name computer with a nice 
Philips monitor. What kind of info do you need here so that I can debug 
this problem?

Erich

erich.iseli at iseli.org wrote:
> Hi List,
> 
> I've read the wiki and forum entries about this issue. I've been using 
> linux for 4 years and made many installations. Tonight I have an hour or 
> two to install ubuntu on my dad's PC, but he needs a dual boot. Other 
> thing: I don't have partition magic or any other windows partitioning 
> tool. His PC has 4 partitions, the 1st being where Windows is installed, 
> all others are free. His PC has no diskette drive, so creating a boot 
> diskette where to save the boot loader is no option either.
> 
> Why is everybody telling not to install grub in the MBR when dual-booting?
> 
> How can I edit the windows bootloader so that it actually starts into 
> ubuntu?
> 
> Here's what I plan to do:
> 1) boot from ubuntu CD
> 2) install it, format the partition now known as E: with fat32 instead 
> of NTFS and F: with xfs (preferrably) or ext3, as well as create there a 
> swap partition
> 3) install grub (QUESTION: where if not the MBR?)
> 4) reboot: being prompted for: windows or ubuntu?
> 
> I guess that doing the steps 1-3 won't modify the windows bootloader. So 
> before doing this, I will have to do something on windows. Any suggestions?
>