Don't end up wasting time with frustration like me because of dell's s/w and grub 2's compatibility issues.(For the impatient scroll for the EasyBCD solution below)
The following is a true story with my new Dell laptop and Ubuntu10.04-netbook OS....
Scenario:
I have bought a new dell laptop, and planning to install ubuntu parallel to windows 7 .
I have a single hard disk of 320GB with the whole of windows 7 dumped in that.
Using administrative tools,I carved out about 145 GB and planned to install ubuntu on that.
After booting the laptop with USB-UbuntuStartup-installation stick ,some trivial questions to answer ,then comes the big thing - Disk Partitioning+Planning.
After going through several websites ,I came to the conclusion that its not proper to continue with the default option.The best way is to manually partition the hard disk.
For that I suggest you go through the link:
http://linuxbsdos.com/2010/05/26/manual-disk-partitioning-guide-for-linux-mint-9-and-ubuntu-10-04/
Here, I could not create a /boot partition because I have a single hard disk.If I do create a boot partition it would show the rest as unusable.
However, if you have another hard disk(it might be shown as /sdb or something like that) then use it to create your ubuntu /boot partition.
I created the others and then finished installation.Then I restarted with GRUB and booted into windows 7.Everything was OK then I restarted again...
Then BOOM!! ,no,there was no explosion but my heart sank to see an error.I dont remember the exact error string,but it would not show any option to select the OSs installed!! After going through many threads about this problem.I finally got the best solution to reinstall grub.
Read the one given at the end by "Reiki" about his "Zino-root" here -->
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1468089
(I dont have a boot-live cd but the USB-UbuntuStartup-installation stick [:)] and some loong system generated number for my root partition.)
This, I found quite helpful because poor students like us don't have Windows 7 installable CDs to circumvent such boot record problems.
After I rebooted my into windows 7 I removed the dell datasafe s-wares.Then again reboot from
the USB-UbuntuStartup-installation stick (Whew! [:(] ) ,repeat the above step given by "Reiki" guy.
Then finally things are running smooth like a well oiled engine (stupid grin [:)] ) .
Moral of the story:
1.Uninstall the dell datasafe swares before installing Ubuntu/linux with grub 2.(Lobbing one more link at you http://swiss.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1475646)
2 Microsoft Windows tries to dominate the whole world by NOT supporting multiple OS boot in their bootloader and I hate it.
There!!... (breathing out heavily...) I think I have summed up my whole tragedy and triumph.
I had some experience in installing fedora core3 (in my 512MB ram desktop) in my college days
and am completely out of touch for 2 years after I started working.A naive user may find it overwhelming to install linux with such weird problems ,so thought of writing this.
All Linux gurus and stalwarts out there please correct/advise for better options.
EasyBCD solution :
Last time i told you regarding the clashes between the Dell-Data-safe and the Ubuntu 10.04-Grub2 problem..
There's the new version of EasyBCD 2.0 which does not need you to uninstall any dell s/wares .
There are two links here which u can peruse . The second one is for downloading the latest version of EasyBCD ,for this you have to register.
http://neosmart.net/forums/show
http://neosmart.net/forums/showthrea
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