Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu

How to Dual Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu​

This tutorial is a simple guide that will explain the two easiest ways to setup and install Ubuntu to dual-boot with your current installation of Windows. One option describes how to do this via WUBI. Another describes how to do this as a native dual-boot.

   Warning

Neither Designer Media Ltd (Sevenforums) nor myself are responsible for any problems that occur from the following tutorial.

   Note

Please bear in mind that the WUBI installation method installs Ubuntu as if it is an application on Windows. It does NOT use its own partitions.

OPTION ONE

Using Wubi Installer

Step 1: Go to this website, download and run the Wubi installer.


Step 2: Select the hard drive you wish to install it on. Keep in mind it will NOT erase Windows.

Step 3: Select the amount of space you want to give tos Ubuntu to use. I recommend 3GB.


Step 4: Select your desktop enviornment. This is personal prefernce, if you are new to Linux I suggest sticking with Ubuntu.


Step 5: Select your language.


Step 6: Set your screenname. Note that this cannot contain capitalized letters of any kind.


Step 7: Set your password. When you have completed that hit the install button and wait!


Step 8: When it finishes downloading and installing Ubuntu, just restart to boot into Ubuntu!

OPTION TWO

Native Install

Step 1: Burn a CD/DVD with the Ubuntu ISO through Windows.


Step 2: Boot from the CD/DVD when you start up your computer.


Step 3:
Press the up button the moment something appears on that screen and select a language.

Step 4: Select the option 'Try ubuntu without installing'.

Step 5: When the desktop appears double click the icon on the desktop called 'Install Ubuntu'.

Step 6: When the installer launches fully, select your language and hit the foward button.

Step 7: On this screen you'll want to choose that options you want. I suggest selecting them both. Hit the foward button again after you select what you want.

Step 8: On this screen you'll want to select the 'specify partitions' option and click foward.

Step 9: Here as you can see we already have some unallocated space, click it and select the 'Add' button. (Note: You can select an already created partition, make sure not to overwrite your Windows partition!)

Step 10: A window should pop up, you should make the mount point '/' and the 'Use as' EXT4 filesystem. Click Ok when done.

Step 11: After that click the 'Install Now' button and follow the onscreen instructions.


Step 12: You'll be prompted to reboot after its finished, reboot and select the top option in the Grub 2 Boot Loader and you're now in Ubuntu!

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and XP
• How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows Vista and XP
• How to Setup a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Vista
• How to Do a Dual Boot Installation with Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Correctly Setup a Dual Boot with Windows 7 and LinuxMint13
• How to Properly Delete a OS in a Dual Boot

 

[Lomai]

Thanks for the tutorial.
Looking forward to part two.

Regards

 

[Dark Nova Gamer]

Added the second Option.

 

[Lomai]

Thanks for the work done.
Will give this a go.

Regards

 

[madtownidiot]

Good tutorial. Two recommendations I would make for people doing a full native installation... if you don't establish an internet connection before before beginning the install, the average first time user will not be able to get drivers for hardware that wasn't included in the cd... this includes some wireless adapters adapters and hardware that is very old, very new, or isn't commonly used

Also Ubuntu installs much more quickly from a flash drive than from a cd/dvd and the process is no more difficult than burning a CD in windows 7

if you just want to try it for a few days, I would recommend using one of the other tutorials to make a bootable flash drive, rather than using wubi..on the average system, it works better as a portable OS booted from a flash drive than when installed inside windows as a program

 

[Lomai]

Good tutorial. Two recommendations I would make for people doing a full native installation... if you don't establish an internet connection before before beginning the install, the average first time user will not be able to get drivers for hardware that wasn't included in the cd... this includes some wireless adapters adapters and hardware that is very old, very new, or isn't commonly used

Also Ubuntu installs much more quickly from a flash drive than from a cd/dvd and the process is no more difficult than burning a CD in windows 7

if you just want to try it for a few days, I would recommend using one of the other tutorials to make a bootable flash drive, rather than using wubi..on the average system, it works better as a portable OS booted from a flash drive than when installed inside windows as a program

Thanks for the info

Regards

 

[sharpy]

Whats the maximum number of partitions in Windows 7 for one drive?
I have Ubuntu as a virtual machine on vmworkstation and I have a backup of the two drive partitions using paragon drive manager 2010 this includes the swap partition. I want to create this on my current installation but I am not sure if you can create a logical partition with the two partitions within or if you have to create two seperate partitions? I already have four partitions so can I create one more partition?
Paragon drive manager allows the set up of dual boot configurations so I think that this will work but I need some advice on the current situation.

 

[madtownidiot]

You get 3 primary partitions and a logical partition..

however, the best way I've found to dual boot ubuntu (or any other current free version of linux) with any version of windows since xp is with a clean install of both operating systems on their own primary partitions

use the windows install disk to:
Create a windows system partition of at least 40GB but no more than 20% of the HDD
Create a 2nd NTFS media partition that leaves 10-20% of the end of the HDD unformatted and unpartitioned, for sharing files between windows and linux
Delete the system reserved partition before installing windows 7

After windows is installed.. boot the linux install cd/dvd/usb key drive and install using the "use the largest contiguous free space" option.. and let linux determine the size of the SWAP partition.

any attempts to prepare the linux portion of the HDD using a windows utility or with a third party partition tool, other than just creating free unpartitioned space at the end of the drive, is doomed to fail miserably if you are someone who needs to ask how to do it

 

[sharpy]

Looks like it doomed to fail so I've created a new install with the original Windows 7 now on a logical partition the same size in total as my original which had two primary partitions for the C and D drives. I use the paragon dual boot software to boot up between the two os's. I've deleted the windows 100 Mb partition and installed the paragon os bootup software and so far it boots up Winows ok.
The rest is free space so now doing a fresh install of ubuntu, but because I want to have a existing ubuntu install which I backed up as a partition which 30 Gb is it ok to specify the same size partition for the new install and then over write this with the previous backup partition? If I create a swap partition of the same size as the original then will this configuration work ok?

 

[Night Hawk]

You may want to add Part #3 in sometime as well. The "install in Windows" option is seen when first placing the live cd in the drive or when browsing to the wubi.exe on the cd you burn.

The other option for setting a dual boot with ubuntu is assigning the mount point "/" to the main root parition and then seeing a new entry added in the 7 BCD using the EasyBCD program's form of NeoGrub which also works quite well. The advantage of the wubi installer however is seeing the latest release installed while in Windows to another partition(root), another hard drive, or even a usb flash drive.

These are a few other options to mention here. Still looks good however!

 

[sharpy]

Thank for the advise. I had to go with the Ubuntu live cd method since the paragon os boot software only seems to work with Windows os's. Anyway I set the size of the partition to be the same as the one I backed up ie 30Gb did I new install and got the clean install to boot up ok. So I can now boot up Windows 7 or Ubuntu. The only now to do is to try overwriting this new partition with the backed up partition (after backing up the clean install in case it won't work) and seeing if this boots up ok. The swap partition does not need changing so it should work.
I do this with a Windows XP vmware virtual machine ie backing up the virtual drive/s using drive backup software booted up from within the virtual os and restoring to a small laptop with the same size hard drive as the virtual machines. It works fine but you always need to uninstall the vmware tools on the virtual machine pior to backing it up otherwise the vmware tools uninstaller will not work once yor have restored it to the real computer. This also works the opposite way by restoring the real os to a virtual os. So you have have the best of both worlds with the same setup on both the virtual and the real machine!

 

[broeckie27]

Thanks you very much this information really helped me out

Thanks you very much this information really helped me out

 

[broeckie27]

No signal - Dectect drive done, no any drives found

Hi everybody, Good day to all of you...
I just bought a new desktop brand Acer - Model - Aspire M7721
Intel (R) core (TM) i7CPU 920@2,67ghz 2,67ghz - 6 gig ram
64 Bits. WINDOWS 7 BASED OFFCOURSE....
WHEN STARTING UP I GET A BLACK SCREEN FOR A SECOND SHOWING THE ERROR MESSAGE - Dectect drive done, no any drives found
WHEN I TURN on the machine i get a black screen a second before power turns off SHOWING THE ERROR message - No signal
So i get two errors -
in boot mode the error - Dectect drive done, no any drives found
Before turning off black screen error - No signal

I just reinstalled windows 7 on this desktop using the ALT + F10 shortcut and i did a full format.

Can anybody help me fix these erors?
Thank you very much for your assistance and guidelines.
Your help is much appreciated.

 

[broeckie27]

Thanks for the interesting information

Hey thank you very much for the interesting information


These are a few other options to mention here. Still looks good however! [/QUOTE]

 

[VKuber]

I've installed the installer without any problems. When booting into dual boot I can let the system boot normally or choose from the 5 options that you have. Every option I have tried I just get a blank black screen and that's it. Has anyone experienced that or have any information on how to fix it? I think it might be my video card but not sure. Any information is appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[avseq]

any way to get win7 as default??

i installed linux side by side now i get option on start up which os to login.
linux is on the top and logs on to it automatically if i dont press any key for 10 seconds.
but i want win7 to be on top, i mean the default one if i dont press anything i want it to start win7, how can i do that?? please let me know

 

[targnik]

Ubuntu Freezing ^^

I used WUBI install method...

Ubuntu 10.10 froze 3 times during 1st usage!? I had to manually reboot system each time.

Windows seems to be running ok (after 30 mins or so) I used Ubuntu for an hour maybe...

Any fixes??

i.e. can I move what's installed to another HD?? -=or=- is there a setting that needs changing somewhere?

T.I.A

 

[duanvcd]

Could you show How to dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu that installing Windows 7 after Ubuntu Installed?

 

[severedsolo]

Hi duanvcd, Welcome to Sevenforums

here you go “How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first) - Ubuntu Forums

 

[broeckie27]

Thanks very much for this
This is very interesting