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I have the following setup:

first partition is windows 7 partition second partition - ubuntu 12.04 partition

while installing ubuntu I installed grub2 bootloader to ubuntu partition

mbr contains windows bootloader

I have tried using EasyBCD to add entry to windows boot menu, with no luck - this entry just boots into grub4dos command prompt

how to add Ubuntu to windows boot menu?

please do not suggest installing grub2 to mbr or wubi..


Update:

I followed the instructions to install EasyBCD and add an entry to Windows boot menu to boot Ubuntu step by step. When I reboot both the NeoGrub Bootloader and the Ubuntu menu items take me to the screen below.

enter image description here

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  • easybcd is the way to go ... please add to your question what you have tried from this Q&A: askubuntu.com/questions/62440/…
    – fossfreedom
    May 20, 2012 at 19:36
  • @fossfreedom - i followed the Q&A you mentioned, added new entry, grub2, it doesnt allow me to select the partition (as device "automatically configured") then when i reboot and select that option - it boots into grub4dos command prompt. so i'm stuck here.
    – dark_ruby
    May 20, 2012 at 19:50
  • @glaucus The only thing I can suggest off the top of my head is to retry step (4) in my answer making sure the type of the entry is GRUB2. If that doesn't work then would you be willing to boot an Ubuntu Live CD and collect a Bootinfo Summary so we can get more details on your boot configuration? First boot using Try Ubuntu. Then follow the steps outlined in this answer. Be sure to add the link to the pastebin to your question. May 21, 2012 at 23:02
  • you need to remove grub from the MBR, and install it on the linux partition. and grub must be properly configured to boot Ubuntu. then you go to EasyBCD and add an entry aiming to Grub.
    – skan
    Sep 27, 2014 at 14:35

4 Answers 4

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The procedure which has worked for me is outlined below.

Did you perform the install of the NeoGrub bootloader in step (3)? If NeoGrub is installed then there will be a \NST folder on your C: drive.

I think this step is sometimes left out of guides for setting up EasyBCD.

Using EasyBCD to Boot to GRUB from Windows Boot Menu

  1. Start Windows and install the free version of EasyBCD.
  2. Open the EasyBCD program and select Add New Entry from the sidebar on the left.
  3. Select the rightmost tab, NeoGrub, under "Operating Systems" and click the Install button.

    screenshot of NeoGrub bootloader install tab

    Note: This adds the NeoGrub bootloader code to your C:\ folder. If the install worked correctly you will see the file C:\NeoGrub and the folder C:\NST.
  4. Select the Linux/BSD tab. Choose GRUB2 as the type of the entry and, optionally, edit the name of the entry you are about to add to the Windows Boot menu.

    EasyBCD Add New Entry for Linux/BSD for GRUB2

    Click the Add Entry button to add an entry to boot Linux (GRUB menu) to the Windows boot menu.
  5. Select Edit Boot Menu from the sidebar to review your changes.

    Note: You can delete the entry for NeoGrub Bootloader if you wish.
    You need the bootloader, but you do not need a boot menu entry for it unless you are using it in some other way.
  6. Save your changes and reboot. When the Windows boot menu appears, select the EasyBCD entry you added to boot Linux. You should see something similar to the text below.

    enter image description here

    Then the GNU GRUB boot menu should appear.
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  • I followed you answer step by step, after I reboot - both NeoGrub Bootloader and ubuntu menu items take me to the same screen --> see screenshot
    – dark_ruby
    May 21, 2012 at 19:08
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I've just been through this as a Linux newbie this weekend and just(!) got this working. I had Windows 7 factory setup on a laptop and was trying to get Ubuntu to dual boot. I used the Windows partition manager to free up some hard disk space and then used live CD and GParted to create a /, /home and swap logical partitions. I then installed Ubuntu into those partitions. I then went back to Windows, ran EasyBCD and every way I tried (see above thread suggestions), always ended up with either with the grub> command prompt and sometimes nothing very much at all.

The first thing to do is check if you can use the grub> command prompt to actually boot into your ubuntu install. This will give you confidence that the install worked and will tell you what settings to use later.

"ls" will give you a listing of where you are. For me, this appeared to be my Windows 7 C drive from some of the directory names it brought up. So, you need to change the root to the partition that contains Ubuntu's /boot files. For this you use the grub "root" command.

Grub doesn't use sda/b/c/d for sata hard disks, instead it uses hd0 for sda, hd1 for sdb etc. The 'tab_key' is used in grub for auto complete options. I only have one hard disk so typing "root (hd0,'tab_key'" gave me all the options for partitions in hd0 that were available. It will help if you know which partition you've installed your /boot into but even then it's not too intuitive. I'd used GParted to create my install partitions so knew I'd installed /boot into partition sda9 so was able to identify it relatively easy. A bit confusing because grub starts counting extended partitions from 4. The way to get grub to get my /boot partition was by typing "root (hd0,8)" i.e. one less than the sda9 number. Do an "ls" and sure enough, I could see the /boot directory a vmlinuz file and a initrd.img file in the root.

The next bit to do is to load the kernel and the initrd file. The kernel one was the one that threw me as you need to specify the root in normal linux terminology as part of the command. Although the actual kernel and .img file are in the /boot, they have long names. In the root there's pointers to them that save on accurate typing. Here's everything I typed, including the root command above:

root (hd0,8)

kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda9

initrd /initrd.img

boot

Doing that brought my Ubuntu up and gave me confidence that it was installed OK. Now I just needed to figure out how to automate it. This took me back to EasyBCD on Win7. Click to add a new entry (I left the original one that took me to grub> alone), and selected the NeoGrub tab and clicked Install. Following that, I clicked Configure and this brought up a menu.lst file. I added all the lines that I'd used above on the grub command line to get it to boot up and that was it. Next time I rebooted, I chose NeoGrub and I'm typing this all in from ubuntu, which looks fab and fast compared to the constant circles of delay of Win7.

links I've been using all weekend....

http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/05/17/how-to-dual-boot-ubuntu-12-04-and-windows-7/2/

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/dual-boot-windows-7-ubuntu.html

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You can use EasyBCD, but keep in mind that this will slow down the booting of the system, so after booting to Ubuntu, change mbr in such a way that it points to the Ubuntu GRUB which will search and list all the operating systems installed in the system, which is far better than windows boot menu, also remove Ubuntu option from Windows boot menu.

0

You can easily install Linux using a live disk. But unfortunately, i did not had a pendrive or cd drive when I really needed to install it. Also, softwares like Unetbootin were giving errors and it did not install. So, here is a complete guide to install Linux directly from hard-drive. I already had Windows 7 installed and I added Ubuntu 16.04 for dual boot.

Step 1: First of all, you need to create atleast a 10 GB partition in your hard-drive. Follow this link to do so. Also give a label to the partition to make the things easier.

Then download two files from the Ubuntu Archive

Click here to know the names of all versions of Ubuntu. Decide your version to download and go to version-updates in the Ubuntu Archive.

For example, to download Ubuntu 16.04, go to xenial-updates in Ubuntu archive. Then go to main folder. Here you will get installer-amd64 (for 64-bit) and installer-i386 (for 32-bit). Select your architecture and then the rest of the path remains the same for both. ie- /current/images/netboot/ubuntu-installer/amd64(or i386)/ Click on initrd.gz and linux (for 64-bit) or vmlinuz (for 32-bit) to download these files. Create a new folder and name it boot in the newly created partition. Put these 2 files in the boot folder.

Step 2: Install EasyBCD from Here. Click on Add new entry and in the Operating System, open NeoGrub tab and click on install.

Step 3: Restart your computer and choose NeoGrub Bootloader from the available options. Simply write this commands one by one.

grub> root = (hd0, [Press Tab to list all the volumes available on your primary hard disk. Write 1 instead of 0 if you created partition in second hard-disk] grub> root = (hd0,n) [Replace n with the number of the new partition.] Then type these commands in order

kernel /boot/linux [Note: type vmlinuz instead of linux for 32-bit]
initrd /boot/initrd.gz
boot

Now it will take you to installer (Mouse won`t work. You need to control with keyboard).

Solutions for a few common errors
I faced a few problems while installing.Here is a list for you.

  1. Mount Point - When you select your partition while installation, you need to format the partition as Ext4 journaling file system and select the Mount Point as / You won`t get such nice GUI but you will know what I mean to say

  2. SWAP Partition - It will ask you to create a swap partition for linux. Select No for now. You can create another patition for linux-swap later.

  3. Incomplete installation - Firstly, I had created only 6 GB partition for Ubuntu. So the installer crashed during the installation (it had already completed 64%) and then I needed to start from step 1. So, I recommend creating a pertition of atleast 15 GB.

  4. Extra Softwares - During installation, it asked me whether I want to install extra softwares or not. It included Blender, GIMP, etc. Skip it for now. The installation of OS requires 5 GB, but installing these softwares were also one of the reasons why the installation crashed before.

  5. GNOME Desktop - You want the nice looking Ubuntu UI, then you must include GNOME Desktop during installation of extra softwares. It will ask the type of desktop environment, gdm3 or lightdm. Choose anyone you want. But I recommend lightdm for computers with low RAM as it is faster than gdm3.

  6. grub rescue - I formatted the partition where I installed Ubuntu 16.04 32-bit as I wanted to install 64-bit OS. Then on next boot, I got this error of grub rescue. It was not easy for me solve this problem because it now required an installation disk for repair but I didn`t had any. Follow this link to solve your problem.

Although I had given a very long explanation about installation process, I can guarantee that you will be using Ubuntu in just 3 hours if you get no extra errors.

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