[MULTI BOOT] Installation woes Win7 Pro/Kubuntu

[vineyridge]

I've been trying to set up a functional dual boot system for days and have utterly failed.
I installed Win 7 Pro on a 500 Gig disk seated at SATA 1 on my ASUS P5G41-M LE CSM BIOS mainboard. Then when I decided to dual boot reinstall Kubuntu again, I moved it to SATA 2 and ran it a few times. It booted but apparently there were some changes made since I could hear the disk working before it booted the first time in SATA 2. It worked perfectly. Then I downloaded a new copy of Kubuntu 18.04 LTS, checksum worked out right, burned it to a new DVD, and data verification from the burning program came back right. Then I turned off the power to my computer and put a HDD for Kubuntu on SATA 1 on the mainboard, Win Pro7 was still in SATA 2, and also installed a HDD with another version of Win 7 on SATA 3. Turned the power back on and removed all partitions on the disk in SATA 1 with Partition Wizard 10. I also asked it to rewrite the MBR. When that finished, Disk 1 was all unallocated space. I did not touch the MBR on the Win 7 Pro Disk or the other Windows 7 version.

In a previous effort, I had zeroed out both the HDD for Win7 Pro and Kubuntu with Kubuntu as SATA 1, Win7 Pro as SATA 2, and the other Win7 as SATA 3. I installed Win7 Pro first on SATA 1, then moved to it to SATA 2 and connected the Kubuntu disk as SATA 1. Kubuntu installed and the GRUB menu appeared, but Kubuntu would not boot. It got as far as the black screen with the cursor, but (per earlier thread on newbie) Plasma didn't load. The suggested fix didn't work, so I decided to start over as described in paragraph 1.

I want GRUB2 on the Kubuntu disk, not the Win 7 Pro disk but have no really good reason why because it's going to change the MBRs on all disks.

So--things are now set up as described in Paragraph 1. I installed Kubuntu in the guided method on sda (SATA 1), it installed, but when I boot I do not get the GRUB menu, I boot to Win Pro 7 (SATA 2). I have rebooted several times and always boot from SATA 2. I have checked both device order and boot order in the BIOS menu, and device order is now set as SATA 1, SATA 2, SATA 3. Boot seems to be SATA 2.

I am typing this from the Kubuntu install disk. I will close out now, and see if I can reset the Boot Order in the BIOS, and will come back after trying that.

[vineyridge]

The first boot device was set in the BIOS to SATA 2, so I changed it to the Kubuntu disk. It now boots to the GRUB2 menu, and to Kubuntu as well. All seems to be good.

How do I either delete or mark this thread as [Solved]

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like you're assuming there's a problem with booting when what you describe is no graphics. Have you tried switching to terminal mode using ALT-F2 after boot or editing the grub entry via the grub menu and changing "quiet splash" to "text" and continuing the boot?

If you installed grub and kubuntu with sata 2 and 3 installed, grub should have detected the Windows installs. Can you boot to them from grub?

Probably your last install attempt on SDA1 doesn't boot so your computer defaults to the next drive to boot from. Usually, if grub fails to install you get an error message. Wiping the hard drive may have removed the ability to boot from it due to the requirements of grub. The reason is, if your new drive format is using GPT partitioning, then grub needs special space allocated to install properly. If your old partition table was MBR, then grub would have likely installed OK.