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So first of all I'm running Windows 7 on one drive, and Ubuntu 9.04 on another. I downloaded and installed Easy BCD 2.0, which I have to say is an excellent piece of software. I used to have grub as my boot manager, but when I installed Windows 7 I lost grub and so I tried using Easy BCD to just use the Windows 7 boot manager to get Linux working.

I was successful, and it was so easy thanks to easy BCD... however, when I do this and select the option of Ubuntu in Windows Boot Manager, it then takes me to grub!! So I basically have to go through a two step process to boot up into Linux. Any ideas?

I found this question, which is similar but I didn't update anything and especially didn't update the Kernel. So the steps to get this were different which led me to post this before even attempting anything mentioned there. Also, I was wondering if anyone knows of a way that I can see what boot loaders are installed and on which drive each reside? Is there some GUI that will show me this info (don't really care if its a gui just prefer it)?

Note: I'd like to say that it doesn't make a difference to me which manager I use, but getting grub to work has proven tedious with all the errors (18, and 21) and using supergrub usually fixes them but breaks my RAID, which I don't intend on doing again.

UPDATE:

I followed the guide to set up Easy BCD for Ubuntu, however when I selected my partition, the only way it will work is if I check the box that says "GRUB isn't installed to MBR boot sector" which is weird because obviously it is since it loads GRUB... Also, when I don't check it, it just plain doesn't work, it will restart my computer and bring up the Windows Boot Manager and give me the selection choice again.

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  • Grub obviously isn't installed to your MBR since you're booting to Win7's boot manager. (well, not to the MBR the BIOS boots from, anyway. even if it is on the other drive's MBR.) you may need to make sure Grub is properly installed to the VBR of your /boot partition (VBR==Volume Boot Record, like a partition's own MBR).
    – quack quixote
    Feb 20, 2010 at 6:37

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According to the Easy BCD Documentation this is how it is intended to work. I suspect the windows boot manager doesn't know how to load Linux kernels and initial ram disks, so grub is necessary.

Your best bet to make it look like it's not using grub. How you do this depends on the version of grub you are using. For ubuntu 9.04 or earlier set the hiddenmenu option in your menu.lst. For later use the magic incantation here. you could also make the timeout shorter so that it boots quicker.

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  • thanks I should probably go through documentation more often hehe... I'll check it out now
    – GiH
    Feb 18, 2010 at 19:26
  • awesome thanks, that worked... but is there no way to boot into ubuntu without the need for grub? I know it doesn't really matter, but I'd rather bypass it if possible.
    – GiH
    Feb 18, 2010 at 21:13
  • If you really want to you could rebuild your kernel. The ubuntu/debian way is to have a separate initrd (initial ram disk), this allows you to boot off of all sorts of exotic devices like RAID and SAN. It is possible to avoid this if you make sure he drivers for your root partition are compiled into the kernel. In my opinion this is much more trouble than it's worth.
    – Martin Hilton
    Feb 19, 2010 at 0:08
  • @GiH: you could go old-school and use LILO, or you could use SYSLINUX, both of which are alternative bootloaders that could replace Grub in your system.
    – quack quixote
    Feb 20, 2010 at 17:22

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