RandomClown Posted July 9, 2008 Share Posted July 9, 2008 sorry for being a noob by not relying on Google. EDIT: OOOPS forgot to finish my sentence! ============ QUESTION 1: ------------ Can Ubuntu Studio read from NTFS partitions? ============ QUESTION 2: ------------ I have been on the web, but the process seems complicated since: - I never used Linux so I dont know how installs work - GRUB stuff & other different sites lead to a FTP site with like 100 different downloads or a ZIP with no *.txt or *.exe. My friend is about to get a new computer [no OS yet] & wants to transfer his XP over, so he wants to make sure we install all the dual booting things & the 2 OS right. I was hoping for someone very experienced with dual booting & linux to help us. In question form: "What do we do 1st?" ============ EXTRA INFO: ------------ - We already DLed the i386 ver. of Ubuntu Studio. - Since we are using the old XP HDD as storage [formatting it], we can legally use the license on the new computer. - We have GParted if that is of any use. - There will be 2 HDD, an 80GB & a 1TB. If the Studio can read/write from NTFS partitions, we want XP & Ubuntu Studio on the 80GB HDD shareing the 1TB for easy video editing & storage - The CPU will be a quad-core 2.?GHz - My friend will pickup the computer from the store in a few hours after this post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
moonlit Posted July 10, 2008 Share Posted July 10, 2008 Can Ubuntu Studio read from an NTFS partition? Yes. How do you install with the dual boot? Install XP as normal in its own partition (50GB or so, if you want space left for Ubuntu), then install Ubuntu on another partition (the remaining 30GB or whatever), Ubuntu should add XP to its boot menu as part of the installation process. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomClown Posted July 10, 2008 Author Share Posted July 10, 2008 Great! Thanks for your response, moonlit! It sounds simple enough already! :D Big thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve8x Posted July 10, 2008 Share Posted July 10, 2008 Hey moonlit! you seem to be good with linux... Ok here's my situation... I recently (like a month ago) reformatted my two hard drives, I installed Windows XP on one of them and Ubuntu on the second hard drive... everything installed fine, and grub boot loader worked and everything! and I had a dual boot XP and linux working... Now what happened is I started hearing the 'click of death' and didn't realize it was bad at first... well I soon found out what that sound means... Anyways my drive that had XP on it, was turned into nothing more than a brick. good thing I have my data backed up... So I had to resize the linux drive so XP could fit on it... then I installed windows XP again on the linux drive, now heres where my problem is... XP overwrote the master boot record(I think thats what its called) Now my dual boot screen doesn't come up anymore, I tried searching the net for how to fix this... and I'm close but not quite there... I booted up with the ubuntu live cd, and opened a terminal... typed: step1: sudo grub step2: find /boot/grub/stage1 step3: root (hdX, X) step4: setup (hdX) still when booting without the CD windows boots right away the boot loader does not come up and allow me to boot to ubuntu... I haven't tried this in a while though, so I'm going to try it again right now... But any help is appreciated... ;) EDIT: OK I'm on ubuntu right now, booted from the live CD... Now when I attempt the above when I type "sudo grub" I get the grub prompt "grub>" then "find /boot/grub/stage1" gives me "(hd0, 5)" "root (hd0,5)" gives no error "setup (hd0)" gives me this: Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 16 sectors are embedded. succeeded Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,5)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded Done. now I will reboot and see if it works this time :) good news! When I booted up I did see the grub boot loader, which contained windows XP at the top, and ubuntu underneath! when I tried booting ubuntu though, I got "Error 17: failed to mount partition" (If i remembered correctly) but windows XP did boot and thats what I'm posting from now... I have a feeling I need to edit the menu.lst file... but what should I change? EDIT2: OK, it seems everything is going my way today! I solved the problem, and I am now in linux booted from hard disk! anyone else who has this same problem, do the above steps... then make sure your menu.lst file is correct from a live cd open it like "sudo gedit /media/disk-1/boot/grub/media.lst" but "disk-1" will most likely be different for you... find the lines like this: title        Steve's Ubuntu Linux 8.04 root        (hd0,5) kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=3617bb3f-1844-46e0-ac68-a563d052214a ro quiet splash initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic quiet title        Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode) root        (hd0,5) kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=UUID=3617bb3f-1844-46e0-ac68-a563d052214a ro single initrd        /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic title        Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+ root        (hd0,5) kernel        /boot/memtest86+.bin quiet and change the "(hd0,5)" 's into whatever you got from step 2 "find /boot/grub/stage1" and there you have it, how to make a dual boot work if you install linux before windows... Theres still one thing that I was trying to figure out before that would be cool... Does anyone know how to get the graphical bootloader screens working? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomClown Posted July 12, 2008 Author Share Posted July 12, 2008 o.o? Me = Confuzled I dont know much about those commands. :D I have 2 more questions. ============ QUESTION 1: ------------ Is it necessary to keep the swap partition? Google kept saying I need it for the installation of the linux OS, but I want to know if I need it after the OS is installed. If not, I will merge it with the storage partition. ============ QUESTION 2: ------------ Would I be able to install 2 XPs on the multi boot menu? He might get a 64-bit OS if he can. Google talks alot about mixing OSes or installing programs, so I am not sure.... Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 ============ QUESTION 1: ------------ Is it necessary to keep the swap partition? Google kept saying I need it for the installation of the linux OS, but I want to know if I need it after the OS is installed. You don't stricktly need it, it's there incase you run out of RAM. If you don't have one and your computer runs out of RAM things will fail. ============ QUESTION 2: ------------ Would I be able to install 2 XPs on the multi boot menu? He might get a 64-bit OS if he can. Google talks alot about mixing OSes or installing programs, so I am not sure.... Yep Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RandomClown Posted July 13, 2008 Author Share Posted July 13, 2008 You don't stricktly need it, it's there incase you run out of RAM. If you don't have one and your computer runs out of RAM things will fail. Yep Ok, thanks, I will leave the swap then. Just to make sure I dont mess up, will it work if I install XP on 2 partitions as I normally would? or do I need to install something else / change settings? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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