Installed Ubuntu over a Windows 8 trial. After installation, Windows 8 still tries to boot. Wiped disk clean with Acronis and reinstall Ubuntu. Windows 8 still tries to start, but goes to blank screen. Ubuntu never tries to boot. Naturally live mode works fine. What do you think of wiping disk again, install Windows 7 and try using GRUB approach or do you know how to remove Windows from the cleaned disk?
4 Answers
Theres two options to boot an Operating System from..
- MBR (Master Boot Record) Boot sector at very beginning of Disk drive
- Boot Sector of each partition
some OS's like MS.Windows affects MBR and you need to place grub boot loader at MBR. for this purpose:
Step 1: Boot up your system with any grub installed emergency disk.
(like : Gparted Emergency, HBCD, Bootable Grub, or Puppy linux)
Step 2: Run gparted program or this command: df and determine what is your drive name (result is like: /dev/sda) without any number at end of /sda
Step 3: if grub is preinstalled then run these commands in shell (terminal):
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo grub-setup /dev/sda
and if its not installed,do this command:
sudo apt-get install grub
anyway you need to edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to enable resume function (Hybernate)
You don't necessarily need to install Windows 7 to edit your GRUB. You could also run a live copy of Ubuntu on a flash drive and then edit your GRUB file following this wiki guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
Alternatively, if the GRUB menu doesn't open automatically upon startup, try holding down the SHIFT key before Windows 8 boots. That usually signals it to open, if it's installed properly.
Do you see GRUB menu or not? May be you have just installed GRUB loader in wrong partition (not the one you are booting from). You can select partition for GRUB loader during setup while selecting partition to setup Ubuntu.
If you want to install GRUB on your hard disk. You can do this by using the Ubuntu Live CD.
Boot to the Live CD. When you get the Ubuntu Live Desktop, Open terminal ( What is a terminal and how do I open and use it? ) and type the following:
sudo grub
This will get you a grub> prompt (i.e. the grub shell).
At grub>. enter these commands
find /boot/grub/stage1
This will return a location. If you have more than one, select the installation that you want to provide the grub files.
This is important: what was returned for the find command use it in the next line for the "?" -
root (hd?,?)
Again use the value from the find command i.e. if find returned
(hd0,1)
then you would enterroot (hd0,1)
Next enter the command to install grub to the mbr
setup (hd0)
Finally exit the grub shell
quit
Now you are done. Reboot the machine.
Another option is to run this command:
grub-install /dev/hda
sudo fdisk -l
, edit your question and add the output of that command to it.