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I have read tutorial after tutorial and seen almost ever questions answered on here about how to dual boot ubuntu with windows, and nothing is helping. I partitioned my hard drive in windows. I made about 332 GB of unallocated (I wanted to use Ubuntu primarily from now on, but still leave windows for various things for school).

Then I burned Ubuntu 14.04.2 onto a CD (DVD actually) and restarted. Hit f12, booted with the CD and hit the Ubuntu installation guide just fine. When I got to the page titled "Installation Type," my only option is /dev/sda and then it says: "no root file system is defined please correct this from the partitioning menu."

When I hit the plus/minus/change buttons the installation crashes. When I exit out of the installation and bring it back up, it still does the same thing. Can somebody please help? I've practically wasted a whole day on this...

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  • Welcome to AskUbuntu! ;-) We're missing some critical information here before we can give you in informed answer. Could you post the output of gparted --list in the "try Ubuntu" mode so we can see what kind (and how many) partitions you have?
    – Fabby
    Mar 27, 2015 at 22:06
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    Thank you for commenting here, but I just decided to install Ubuntu and put windows in a virtualbox. Thanks anyways. However, I did first do what Mudit Kapoor said. It worked, but I wasn't able to get to the GRUB loader. I was using windows 8 actually, and I think it might have been the quick install that was skipping GRUB. Anyways, I got too frustrated and just went straight Ubuntu
    – Jeremy
    Mar 30, 2015 at 20:23

2 Answers 2

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1. Re-install Windows 7 by re-partitioning your whole hard disk, which means delete and re-create all partitions. Then select an specific partition for Windows 7 installation.

  1. After that, use any partition manager (EaseUS Partition Manager) and convert all your partitions to LOGICAL, except the partition where you installed Windows 7 (it should be PRIMARY)

  2. Then use the disc management tool in Windows and shrink one of your LOGICAL partitions to make some unallocated space.

  3. Start Ubuntu installation, using USB stick instead of disc is recommended. In the installation type choose 'Something Else'

  4. Choose the Unallocated space and make root, home, swap partitions for Ubuntu, I hope you know it.

If you do correctly, you should see the GRUB menu at next boot where you will be given options in which OS to boot.

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  • Alright, this definitely sounds like a long and technical approach. Could you point me in the direction of a link with a more detailed explanation? Also, is there any way I could accomplish this without having to completely delete my existing partition? That seems a bit drastic, and I have a version of ubuntu in virtualbox (in windows) that is configured to what I need for work; so I would like to have that as a fall back
    – Jeremy
    Mar 22, 2015 at 19:13
  • How do I do number 1? Do I use diskpart like in this video? But just with disk 0?
    – Jeremy
    Mar 23, 2015 at 5:33
  • Well, I have found a workaround. You can completely skip the first step, start from the 3rd one. But don't forget to make the logical partitions (the windows os partitions should be left as is (primary) ). If all fails, then you should try the first step as well.
    – Ahmed Sadman
    Mar 25, 2015 at 12:29
  • And for guide, follow this: everydaylinuxuser.com/2014/05/… , follow till the 6th step (skip 5th), after that reboot and you will see the GRUB screen to boot.
    – Ahmed Sadman
    Mar 25, 2015 at 12:46
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You don't need to partition your hard drive and leave unallocated space. Just choose install ubuntu alongside windows option and then set the amount of space you want for ubuntu using the slider.
Try downloading grub customiser to help with the grub problems you are facing.

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