How to” Dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 (Ubuntu installed first)

I found this on Ubuntu Forums and found it very cool way to have dual operating system(Windows & Linux) beside eachother. Although this one is written for Windows7 but it works with Vista and XP. If you have Windows installed on your pc, you do not need to go through these troubles. The reason is that while you are installing Linux, Grub automaticly detects that you have one operating system already on your system and you are going to have one Linux beside it, and the result is that it will give you a list of operating systems to choose on each booting of your computer. But when you have Linux installed and suddenly you want to have Windows beside it as well, there would come troubles as Microsoft does not care about your wishes to have two operating systems beside each other(as Linux does). So you have to move it a little bit and do things manually as it is written in this very useful tutorial. I hope you find it useful as well.

Original tutorial :

I have recently seen many posts from people trying to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 beta, but not succeeding. So I tried it out myself and found a solution.
Index
1. Obtain a copy of Windows7.
2. Partition your disk with gparted.
3. Install Windows7.
4. Re-install Grub.
5. Edit Grub to List Windows 7.
6. Have Fun.
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1. Obtain a copy of windows 7.

Official Microsoft Link - http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...FRE_EN_DVD.iso

*This Link Is Now DEAD Go to the Microsoft website and get your own download. Requires java*

*You can also find a torrent of this but for legal reasons I cannot provide a link. *


2. Partition your disk

**This does go wrong in some cases, if in doubt back up your valuable data.**

Boot from a Ubuntu live cd or a gparted live cd.
Start up gparted, If ubuntu is on the whole disk you need to re-size it by at least 8 gb for Windows 7. (Make sure windows 7 is on the second partition to make it easier for grub) You will be left with some unallocated space on your hard disk if you want you can partition it to NTFS or you can do it later on the windows install.

3. Install Windows 7

Follow the on screen instructions, Select the un-partitioned space to format and install windows on, or if you already made it NTFS choose your NTFS partition.

**It will ask for a product key but you have 30 days to do that. Note: Beta keys will work with the RC**


4. Re-install GRUB

Now you have windows 7 but it has completely eaten your boot loader so you need to re-install grub.
Boot from the Ubuntu live CD and go to terminal.
Type in terminal:

"sudo grub"
"grub> find /boot/grub/stage1"

That should return your Ubuntu partition in the form of (hdX,Y), use that:

grub> root (hdX,Y)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

(you don’t need to type the grub> bit)

That has re-installed grub but you can no longer see windows7

5. Edit grub.
Go to terminal from normal ubuntu and type :

“sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst”

A large text file will open and at the bottom leave a line and add this:

title windows 7 beta (Loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

(Do not type this line but if that does not work on re-boot try “hdo,0 or hd0,2” and so on until it works.)

Now that is done you can re-boot into windows 7 and ubuntu happily

******************Edit***********************
Hi
I have remembered that if you also have vista installed on your machine when you in install 7, that windows 7 will add itself to the vista bootloader.

So You will need to point grub to the vista partition so it will load the vista loader and give you the option for 7 and vista.

Also To work out what partition number your 7 partiton is use gparted it will give you results like "Windows 7 sda2" that means hda0,2 or if you have two internal hard drives than change the tab in the top right to the appropriate disk. Then take note of the sda2 but as it is on the 2nd drive it will be hda1,2. And so on..........

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