My laptop is already dual booting with Windows 7 & Ubuntu 11.10, with Ubuntu GRUB bootloader. I would like to go fer a fresh Ubuntu 12.04 installation, without disturbing the Windows 7 boot record info in the current 11.10's GRUB.
If I install Ub 12.04, will the new GRUB have the Windows 7 option automatically loaded? Restoring Win7 boot and then going for fresh 12.04 install is very risky, i believe.
I want this with very minimum possible damage. Please help me out.
Regards, User
I've already done what you want to do. I also use to have Windows 7 in one partition and Ubuntu 11.10 in another partition.
I also did a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04. Now I have Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 in different partitions.
Do the following: first, backup your information. Second, boot your computer from a LiveCD. At a certain point of the installation process you will see something similar to this:
Choose the option that says that you want to "Erase Ubuntu 11.10 and reinstall" and click "Install Now". Nothing will happen to your windows partition. Your old Ubuntu 11.10 will disappear and a new Ubuntu 12.04 will be installed.
Let me tell you something about fresh installs: sometime they are great, I do it once a year. But after you do a fresh install you will realise all the changes you made to your old Ubuntu, and that you will have to do it again. The problem is when you don't remember how you did it, so you will spent a lot of time configuring everything again.
Think about doing a fresh install and good luck.
OK, I'm not completely clear on which direction you want to go, so I'm going to say more than is probably needed.
My understanding from your question is that you
It is not clear to me whether you want to migrate/upgrade your current 11.10 install to 12.04 or install 12.04 separately from both Windows and 11.10.
It seems most plausible that you simply want to upgrade your 11.10 to 12.04. This is what the suggestions to run the command do-release-upgrade in a terminal window were about. This is one of the ways to begin the upgrade process.
Actually, there are several different paths you can take to upgrade an existing install to 12.04. These are covered in detail in this question: How do I upgrade from 10.04 or 11.10 to 12.04? which I suggest you look at.
While it is possible to upgrade from 11.10 to 12.10 without install media, my opinion is that it's not a bad idea to have a 12.04 Live CD or USB available "just in case" it happens to be needed.
And if you do want to install 12.04 but also keep both Windows and 11.10, you will definitely need to boot from a 12.04 Live CD or USB.
Whichever way you go as long as Windows is already installed when you begin, it should be detected and included in the GRUB boot menu. This works the same way in 12.04 as it did in 11.10. You should not need to bother with sudo update-grub. It should happen as part of either upgrade processing or new install processing.
in the process of installation make sure that you are not touching the partitions that have Ubuntu 11.10 and windows 7 . so its better to choose the manual option (last option) before step of choosing partitions. then choose the harddisk partition which you want give or 12.04 .
dont worry about the GRUB , it will take care of Ubuntu 11.10 and Windows 7 to have in the GRUB menu . i am sure about it will work for you .
Just type in terminal the below command.
sudo update-grub
After that restart computer.
Don't worry, just type in terminal:
sudo do-release-upgrade
