I get stuck in a black GRUB screen.
I want to learn about Ubuntu on my Windows 7 laptop. I use wubi.exe and followed the steps of the "Installing Ubuntu with the Windows installer" guide.
I use my old laptop Dell Latitude D810 with a 300GB HD with two partitions:
- C: Win7 system disk (NTFS, 38.5 GB free out of 78.1 GB)
- D: Data disk (NTFS, 131 GB free out of 219 GB)
Because of the available free disk space on data disk D:, in step 3 of the guide, I selected disk D: as target for a 30 GB Ubuntu installation. This selection is accepted. The installation completes to step 6 where I choose Reboot now.
Then I do not get the dual-boot menu expected in step 7 but a black screen with the following centered white text:
GNU GRUB version 1.99-21ubuntu3.1
Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible
device or file completions.
Grub>
To get the boot menu of step 7, I have to reboot the laptop by forcing power off/on. Then, when I select to boot Ubuntu, again, as before, I get the black GRUB screen straight away. I do not need to press Shift when booting up. Pressing Shift or not, I always get the same black GRUB screen as quoted before.
The Ask Ubuntu post "My computer boots to a black screen" does not help, since the GRUB screen does not display any menu choice. There is also no GRUB menu entry and no set params entry to select and to press 'e' to edit that entry.
I am new to Ubuntu. Never heard of GRUB before. Although I selected German as language in step 3, in GRUB the keyboard is not the German but the English version, thus entering text commands would not be easy.
Now, I am stuck in GRUB. Why? How to proceed?
Edit:
Problem solved
In step 3, I chose the partition D:, the partition with most free space. To Windows 7 this is not a system start partition. Obviously WUBI is not more clever than Windows 7. It also cannot address from the MBR to a non-system partition.
I made a retry with partition C:, the Windows start partition, a partition with hardly sufficient free space. Now dual-boot works.
The "Installing Ubuntu with the Windows installer" guide should explicitly state in bold letters, that in step 3 for wubi.exe operations the INSTALLATION TARGET MUST BE A SYSTEM PARTITION. Or even better, no other partition should be offered or accepted in the step3 input form.
