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Searock
Asked: 2010-12-05 07:16:18 +0800 CST

How do I get the GRUB menu to show when starting my dual-boot system?

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Recently I have installed Ubuntu 10.10 and selected a wrong option while installing it.

Now the problem is that my machine directly boots Ubuntu and even does not show me grub menu.

How do I install grub menu ?

And how do I add Windows Vista to the grub menu?

This is what I have tried.

sudo grub

> root (hd0,0)

> setup (hd0)

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

I don't know what's going wrong here and I am sure that I have not wiped out my windows partition.

Edit : 

sudo update-grub

Generating grub.cfg ...  
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic  
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic  
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin  
ls: cannot access /media/BC54B2C654B282A6/boot  
Boot: No such file or directory  
done 

sudo os-prober

ls: cannot access /media/BC54B2C654B282A6/boot  
Boot: No such file or directory

Thanks.

grub2

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I tried using sudo update-grub and sudo os-prober but I had no luck.

    So this is what I have done.

    sudo gedit /etc/default/grub and placed a comment # in front of the line GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0.

    Then I updated my grub so that I don't have to press Left shift for the grub to appear using sudo update-grub .

    After updating the grub I opened grub.cfg using sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg command.

    And added 

    menuentry "Windows Vista" {

set root='(hd0,1)'

chainloader +1

}

    between ### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ### and ### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

    And don't forget to save the file.

    I am marking this answer as Community wiki in case someone wants to add or modify this post.

    Edit to update:

    Meanwhile (2013) we have a GUI tool to repair/reinstall grub: Boot Repair.

    To use it, do one of the following:

    • Create a live CD/USB of Ubuntu Secure Remix, which is an Ubuntu live with supplementary rescue tools, boot from that and use Boot Repair.

    • If you already have a regular Ubuntu live iso, create live usb with UNetbootin, live boot from that and install Boot Repair

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

    sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair &

    (But apt-get update on a live USB might involve updates that take some time - and are also useless if the live usb is not persistent - so I recommend the first solution.)

    Using Boot Repair to fix/reinstall GRUB is simple, just choose default/recommended repair option; more details here.

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  2. The first part is that the GRUB menu is there it just hides but the left-shift key during boot brings it up (as described in How to get to the GRUB menu at boot-time? (obvious, no?)).

    The second part is that update-grub should run os-prober and find your Windows boot and chain-load it. The output of update-grub would be helpful in figuring out what isn't happening correctly.

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