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I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04.1 64x alongside Windows 7(32bit) (Ubuntu after Windows 7) on my PC. Ubuntu installed properly without any errors. I installed grub on sda5 logical drive (one mounted with /boot), and os on sda6 (again logical) (mounted with /).

when i rebooted it took me to windows as windows bootloader is in mbr, on first primary partition of disk. I added the entry for ubuntu with easyBCD and when again rebooted there was an entry but i was taken to a prompt called grubfordos, which looks like grub rescue prompt. in windows C drive i found folder LST and one .mbr file created by easyBCD i guess.

i dont know whats gone wrong. Please help.

PS i ahve swap area of 8 gb on sda7 (logical).

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3 Answers 3

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For understanding what is going on and repairing your boot problem see Dual boot Windows 7 and Linux.

Easybcd uses Windows 7 bootmgr to chainload grub4dos to chainload GRUB which is overkill. Bootmgr can chainload GRUB directly as well the other way around - GRUB can chainload almost any foreign boot manager.

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    it would be great help if you can tell me or point me to the method of adding ubuntu entry in windows bootloader manually without easybcd, i.e. as you said directly chain load grub.
    – Samir Chauhan
    Dec 31, 2012 at 4:59
  • Bizzare!! I dont understand this, I have now tried installing 32 bit version and its flawless, i believe my i7 processor supports 64 bit ubuntu then why it caused this problem while installing with 32 bit windows 7. Also my system is hp cpmpaq elite, which is bios based, but when i installed 32 bit(or 64 bit) ubuntu partiotining disk with ubuntu and when i loged back in windows it showed me more then 4 primary partition isnt it feature of efi system and not of bios system. also when i tried created another partition it said not enough space, the MBR characteristics. i think my hdd is MBR based
    – Samir Chauhan
    Jan 1, 2013 at 7:20
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If this problem occurred to others, please try out 32 bit Ubuntu with 32bit Windows. I dont know exactly why, but it solved my problem.

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  • I used easyBCD to add entry to windows bootloader, after installing ubuntu on partion just after windows partition, with grub installed on same partition as /. (i.e. System, root)
    – Samir Chauhan
    Jan 1, 2013 at 7:25
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Samir Chauhan's solution of installing 32bit version of Linux solves the problem but it arises another problem - it restricts the max RAM usage to 4GB as we use 32 bit architecture. (mine has got 8gb ddr3 ram and why should I waste the remaining)

I have a solution for that, but you cannot use windows bootloader with it, instead grub2 takes control. Still you can boot into both the OS.

Install ubuntu once more, configure the partitions with one partition (for installing linux) with ext4 file system and with mount point /, and format the 350 MB (or sometimes it is 1024MB) system reserved partition that contains windows 8 bootloader and set it to EFI BOOT PARTITION, and set the installation of bootloader in that partition (most probably it will be hd0,0 meaning it is the first partition sda0) and then install the ubuntu normally. Once you reboot you can see violet screen (grub2 showing some three to five options) or sometimes it would take you directly into ubuntu, and what you gotta do is open terminal after booting to ubuntu and type "sudo update-grub" and then windows will be detected :)

You can then see both ubuntu and windows the next time you boot in the grub2 menu

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