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

erich.iseli at iseli.org erich.iseli at iseli.org
Tue May 31 13:51:58 UTC 2005


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?




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