Windows 7: Windows 7 and Ubuntu dual boot?

Hello all,

First off, if this is in the wrong forum, I apologize.

OK what I am trying to do here is have my computer dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10. I have Windows 7 installed on my original hard disk. I bought a second hard disk last week and installed Ubuntu 9.10 on it. I am trying to get my computer to be able to boot both of them. I want to have the Windows 7 hdd be the primary boot with the Ubuntu hdd be the option. To get the Windows 7 hdd to work, I have to completely remove the Ubuntu hdd. If the Ubuntu hdd is installed, the Windows hdd will not boot. The computer will start up and 20-25 seconds later, it will restart and freeze at the "Starting Windows" screen. If I put the Ubuntu hdd in the main slot and the Windows hdd in the secondary, it will start right up and recognize that the Windows hdd is installed. I think that this is because, Windows wants to be the only OS and doesn't recognize others. How do I change this so that both hdds are bootable without physically removing one.

I have looked on both UbuntuForums, Windows website, and here and have found nothing that helps.

Was the Windows hard drive connected when you installed Ubuntu?

no it wasn't. I didn't have a caddy for it at the time and I needed to start configuring it for a class project that I am doing

Hello matt011990, and welcome to Windows Seven forums.

If you could be a little more specific about how you have computer setup, it would help us. If the Windows hard drive was disconnected when you installed Ubuntu, then the Grub boot loader would not have found Windows and added it to its boot menu, so how do you plan to choose between the OSs?

You can use the BIOS boot menu, if available. You just tell the bios at boot time which hard drive to boot to and the installed OS starts.

You are correct in that Windows is not as friendly with other OSs as Linux is. The Grub boot loader that comes with Ubuntu 9.10 boots easily to either OS and you can set Windows to be the default OS there. Please have a look at the links at the bottom of this post and let me know if you have any other questions?

Cheers!
Robert

While you are reading, check to make sure the Win 7 drive is listed first in the boot order in the bios. If you disconnected it prior to the Ubuntu install and then reconnected it, you moved it to secondary. You could then use EasyBCD to set up the dual boot.

If you decide to use Grub 2 as you boot loader, you need to leave it the way it is and setup the dual boot in Grub as iseeuu mentions. I just did this, so if you need the grub 2 entries, post back. Grub 2 also changed the partition numbers so the first partition is now 1 instead of 0 the way it used to be.

Edit: I found this...
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1035999

Ok thanks for the help everyone, but unfortunately my problem was neither Windows 7 nor Ubuntu. Rather the problem was my laptop. It is an HP Pavilion dv9000, after some aadditional research, I discovered that hard drive bay #2 does not support any hard drives bigger than 200GB. I had the original 100GB hard disk in bay #1 and the new 320GB hard disk in #2. After moving stuff around, I now have the 320GB in bay #1 and the 100GB in bay #2, with a working dual boot.

Thanks again for the help everyone
Matt

Glad to hear you got it sorted. Thanks for posting back and letting us know your solution! You are appreciated.

Cheers!
Robert