Home / ubuntu / Questions / 110369
Accepted
Alex Poulos
Asked: 2012-03-06 17:10:19 +0800 CST

Would dualbooting Windows mess up GRUB?

  • 772

I have Ubuntu 12.04 as my main OS, but have been thinking of doing some dualbooting, would making a partition specifically for Windows and installing it to that partition mess with GRUB? or Would it be fine?

grub2 windows dual-boot 12.04

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    1st option : get a CD including Boot-Repair

    The easiest way to use Boot-Repair is to burn one of the following CDs and boot on it.

    • Boot-Repair-Disk is a CD starting Boot-Repair automatically. (English only).
    • Boot-Repair is also included in Ubuntu Secured Remix CDs (multi-languages).

    Get boot-repair disk

    Remarks:

    • You can also install the ISO on a live-USB.
    • Please note that this ISO is not an official Ubuntu image.

    2nd option : install Boot-Repair in Ubuntu

    Either add ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair to your Software Sources via the Software Centre or, for speeds-sake, add it using a new Terminal session:

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

    Image of Boot-Repair application

    You can run this from terminal sudo boot-repair

    • 3

  2. Yes, it will mess it up, but...

    If you install Windows 7 / Windows XP, installer will override MBR to point to windows boot menu -- which by the way don't allow you to boot linux.

    If you boot some live distro from flashdisk/CD/DVD after succesfull windows install and update GRUB (and edit grub.cfg to point to windows partition) you will be good again.

    Note that Windows 8 beta behaves little differently.

    • 1

  3. Windows would mess up GRUB, after you install Windows just use a live CD and follow these instructions.

    • -1