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I have 2 hard drives and it appears that windows is installed on sdb1, however i wish to install ubuntu (lubuntu with unity) on sda, sda1 or sda2 im not sure of. i unplugged sdb and windows loader still appeared and said windows was not working, which means windows loader is installed on sda1 which has 104MB, does this mean i can install ubuntu straight onto sda2? and what about "device for boot loader installation" do i have to change that option? -just to make clear i want windows boot loader so i can decide which OS to chose, which means i don't want windows harmed at all. is this possible?

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thank you.

J.Hunter
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  • Can you mount those partitions from a live Ubuntu session and check the existence of NTLDR(if Windows XP) or bootmgr(vista or newer) in any partition? That should be your system partition, alternatively from Windows disk-management check for boot(installation) and system(loader) partition. – Samik Aug 08 '12 at 17:20
  • OK, i was not sure is system reserved boot (installation) ? i have added a picture from the disk management. – J.Hunter Aug 08 '12 at 17:45
  • Why did you create a partition called "Linux Mint" and formatted it to NTFS? Linux cannot be installed on a NTFS partition. Just let Mint take care of the partitions during the setup. –  Aug 08 '12 at 17:48
  • thats just the name of the HHD and their is no linux os on either HHD at the moment, i have not touched the HHD. – J.Hunter Aug 08 '12 at 17:50
  • @J.Hunter Yes sda1 is the system partition and sdb1 is the boot partition for Windows. You should be able to install Ubuntu on sda2 and can also install GRUB(Ubuntu's bootloader) on sda or sdb, you'll be able to choose Windows to boot from GRUB menu once it's installed. GRUB detects existing Windows installation and includes it in the menu. – Samik Aug 08 '12 at 18:00

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Unplug the windows hard drive. Then boot up the Ubuntu LiveCD and install.

Then once you've installed Ubuntu plug your Windows HDD back in. Your computer will now boot to whichever hard drive is set to boot first in your BIOS. Set it so that your Ubuntu drive boots first and boot your fresh Ubuntu install.

Once you're in Ubuntu, use sudo-update-grub in the terminal. This should update your grub.cfg file (the configuration file for GRUB2, the bootloader for Ubuntu). Upon reboot, if that doesn't work, there are a ton of tutorials that show how to manually configure your grub.cfg file for Windows.

Ray Zane
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