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**kc1di** · Jun 05, 2012, 06:27 PM

Install Grub in the MBR of sda1
Install Kubuntu I would use the manual partition and make two partitions out of sda5
one of about 12gbs for / partition and the rest as /home partition.
then you'll have sda5 ext4 /
and sda6 swap
and sda7 /home

**KDEnewbie** · Jun 07, 2012, 10:42 AM

I should start this post with the firm mentioning that I am a newbie to KDE & Kubuntu but not entirely new to Linux (couple of years or so which makes me still a bit of a beginner), but I have recently had some success installing a dual boot with Win7, I took this different option because of many people reporting problems with doing the usual dual boot install (ie. Grub into the MBR at the beginning of sda).

Anyway, what worked for me is the following, and if anyone else more experienced can point out any pitfalls of doing this then please do, I just want to give the OP another option to consider.

Firstly, I personally don't bother with a seperate /home partition simply because if I upgrade at the next 6 monthly new version then I prefer all the little .config files in /home to be fresh and new along with a fresh install, but that is just my preference.

What I did was to free up some space on the hd from within windows, in my case there was the usual Win 7 100mb 'System Reserved' partition, my C drive for windows and programs of exactly 125gb and D drive of around 800gb (this was my data storage for all files, videos, movies, docs, music photos etc.). Off the top of my memory a live linux cd or gparted cd read my disk as sda1 100mb, sda2 125gb and sda5 800gb (bare in mind that sda5 is the 1st LOGICAL or EXTENDED partition in linux notation).

So, I shrunk the D drive (sda5) by around 200gb for linux, left this as free space or 'unallocated space'.

Then I created just 3 simple partitions for Linux, /boot /root /swap (in that order) using the installer cd, and did so with the check mark ticked for at the 'beginning' on each of the little windows message boxes, so
1) create /boot giving size of 500mb (way bigger than needed but allows for future updates etc) on sda6 (6 in my case after doing the shrink of D drive or sda5 as it was and thus creating a new logical/extended partition), mountpoint /boot, logical, keeping default ext4

2) create /root giving whatever size you want, I gave it around196 gb, mountpoint / , keeping default ext4, also leave radio box checked for partition location as 'at beginning'

3) create /swap, logical, I gave it around 4gb, mountpoint /swap, this time check "swap area" for file system, also leave it checked ' at beginning' for location (as it was my final partition it should go directly after the 2 previously created partions (ie. at the end of sda6 in my case)

Now the important bit, when you select the above (or as similar for your particular layout or number of partitions), you then look near the bottom of the screen for the "device for bootloader" entry, on the dropdown menu I selected sda6 and NOT sda (the default which places grub into the mbr).

Then finish the install & reboot..
You should then see your pc just reboot into Win 7 as usual.

Now you will need to tell Windows that there is another bootable OS, by far the easiest way to do this is with a very good little free program called EasyBCD from NeoSmart, just install it in Windows and then open it, then

1) click on "Add New Entry" button, then select "Linux/BSD tab then from the dropdown select "Grub 2", click on "add entry" to confirm, then you can have a quick glance by clicking on "Edit Boot Menu" where you should see the default OS to load and the option to set how long, ie 30 seconds to boot default OS etc.

When you next reboot you should see the Windows bootloader give you the option to boot into wither Win7 or the new OS you just installed (you need to name it btw, so call it 'Kubuntu 12.04 LTS or whatever, however you want the entry to appear on your boot screen)

This is basically giving the Windows bootloader control over start up without overwriting it with GRUB, so if your happy to do it this way it should work well, at least it has done for me. Hope this helps.

**oshunluvr** · Jun 07, 2012, 05:33 PM

Originally posted by kc1di View Post

Install Grub in the MBR of sda1
Install Kubuntu I would use the manual partition and make two partitions out of sda5
one of about 12gbs for / partition and the rest as /home partition.
then you'll have sda5 ext4 /
and sda6 swap
and sda7 /home

Unless you have another boot manager installed, installing grub to the boot record of /dev/sda1 will leave your system unbootable.

The Master Boot Record (MBR) resides in the first 446 bytes of hard drive space before the partition table and is therefore not on a partition. Partitions also have space for a boot record - called a Partition Boot Record (PBR) - but your BIOS can't boot to that directly. You can boot to a PBR via "chainloading" from another boot manager, but not directly.

The correct place to install grub if you want to boot to it is /dev/sda which is not the same as /dev/sda1. Of course, if you're keeping Windows boot manager or some other boot manager, you can install grub to any partition - or not at all. If you're going to dual boot using Windows boot manager, I'd suggest another forum or web search for info on how to do that.

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