Step-by-step beginner's guide to installing Ubuntu 11.10

Hi Lee,

I'm back again. As I mentioned above, I correctly installed Ubuntu 11.10m but when I restart my PC, I do not get a GRUB menu and my PC goes directly to the Windows 7 start-up screen. Did I miss something? Or is there a step required to activate the GRUB start-up?

Thanks,

Paul

Hey Paul,
Appears you are one of the less-fortunate ones. It's quite common I think.

Have you created a separate /boot partition?
Can you give some details on you installation? Partitioning, filesystems, etc?
A shotgun-debug is possible, but not advisable.

Hi,

As I mentioned I was having problems with my PC - when I installed Ubuntu 12.04 I couldn't get the GRUB to work correctly.

When I re-installed Ubuntu 11.10, I accidentally checked my main Windows partition as a Swap area, After that, only Ubuntu 11.10 would boot. I tried everything to recover from the error, but all I could do was reformat my hard disk.

After that, I re-installed Windows 7, buy no boot partition was created.

Then when I installed Ubuntu no GRUB showed up. Now I'm back to a single partition, since I couldn't access Ubuntu 11.10.

I guess what I need to know is how to do a fresh re-install of Windows 7 with 3 partitions: System Reserved, Recovery and the Main Windows 7 partition.

I have a Win7 ISO install disk and I also have a set of Acer AM3970 recovery disks that I created when I first got my PC.

Thanks for your time, I appreciate it.

Paul

Well, here are a few links:
http://ubuntuguide.net/how-to-restore-grub-2-after-reinstalling-windows-xpvistawin7
http://www.ohbuntu.blogspot.in/2009/11/repair-grub2-after-install-windows-7.html
http://www.howtogeek.com/?post_type=post&p=114884
http://askubuntu.com/questions/129058/how-to-install-windows-7-after-ubuntu-and-dual-boot

Hope they help.

Best,
Marnomancer

Hi again,

I checked out your links. They are for the case of Ubuntu first & Win7, second.

My problem is Win7 first, then Ubuntu - I get no GRUB menu

Paul

Err, my bad. I know of a fix to the "invisible grub", but it requires booting into Ubuntu. I thought the links were relevant. Anyhow, I'll look up your issue again. Don't worry and kindly be patient.

I really think that this is more a Win question than a Unix one. Thanks for your help.

The problem as I see it:
The Windows installation broke GRUB by replacing it's own bootloader. Have you tried rebuilding GRUB with a rescue disk?

Nice guide I'll try it tommorow I guess on my desktop but nice guide.

Hi Lee,

Well I made a clean install of Windows 7 using my Acer AM3970 recovery disks (had to erase the disk drive FIRST).

That creates three partitions on the disk: Recovery partition, Boot partition and Windows 7 partition.

I then reduced the size of my Win7 partition by 1/3 to create space for Ubuntu (I have a 1.5 terabyte drive).

When I installed Ubuntu this time, I created a Logical partition rather than a Primary partition, since you can only create 4 primary partitions. I reserved 8 GB for the swap area, since I have 4 GB of on-board memory:


When I set it up like that, everything works just fine. I get see GRUB menu, Win7 and Ubuntu 11.10 are available, and I'm a happy camper!

Now, all I have to do is find out what is causing the GRUB error ("error: no such partition") when I install Ubuntu 12.04 LTS...

Paul S.

Yes, which is why I'm looking forward to Quantal.
Kernel 3.5 sounds good, but I had real trouble upgrading from 2.6.x. So I guess I'll stick to it until I finish Project LFS.

Hi sir,
your tutorial is so nice and its very usefull to me. and can I copy your tutorial with your permission

regards
utham.

Thnx for +ve responce..!!

Hi Lee,
thanks for a wonderful post a step by step installation of Ubuntu and that too with all screen shots enclosed.

yesterday I have installed ubuntu in my old laptop. usually I am bit careful while installing OS especially when im working with partitions and when I want to preserve the data.
But yesterday I was very drowsy and I selected the option (7.B) "Replace Windows 7", I thought only the windows partion (c will be formatted since I dont save much data in c: drive I thought to format it and oops the entire hard disk got formatted.

could you suggest any way I can recover my files. the previous partitions are all NTFS.
I have lost pretty important photographs and several programming examples.of course no need to say it again I dont have any back up for them .

please suggest what to do. I have stopped using the laptop so as not to disturb the file system again and minimize the loss.

Sorry to hear that you may have accidentally reformatted those pics and data on your Windows install. Unless you had those pics and data on a separate back up or data partition like D: or have that data elsewhere they would be hosed from selecting that option (7.B) with your Ubuntu install.

very good idea not to be using the drive and take a look here these guides and option may be of help to you in getting some of that data back .There are rather time intensive but could recover some of the data that you lost.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec_Step_By_Step

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15761/recover-data-like-a-forensics-expert-using-an-ubuntu-live-cd/

Best of luck

Thanks rrplay

I will try those tools listed in the links and tell u the result.
Thanks again.