Recommend me a free Boot Loader program

Can anyone recommend me a good free boot loader program for my PC.

I have just installed a second hardrive into my PC and have loaded Ubuntu onto it. I need something that will allow me to boot from my original hard drive (Vista) or the new one. Obviously I can set my Bios to whichever I want but that's a faff every time I turn the PC on. I just want something to give me the option when I turn on. Is it a boot loader program I need?

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by madness

Can anyone recommend me a good free boot loader program for my PC.

I have just installed a second hardrive into my PC and have loaded Ubuntu onto it. I need something that will allow me to boot from my original hard drive (Vista) or the new one. Obviously I can set my Bios to whichever I want but that's a faff every time I turn the PC on. I just want something to give me the option when I turn on. Is it a boot loader program I need?

Erm GRUB that comes with Ubuntu will do that for you...

install grub inside the bootable partition of the second disk, and get the nt bootloader to chainload grub?

Soulkiss -I'll have a look at Ubuntu tonight

cmsd2 - I'm not that clever!

[SoulKiss]

I have never dualbooted a Linux/Windows combo - always had enough spare hardware to not need to...

So with that in mind, set the machine to boot into Ubuntu, then open a terminal and run

dpkg-reconfigure grub

This will (I believe) cause GRUB to rescan for OS's and set itself up as the Bootloader, and hence present you with the option of which OS after a reboot.

At least thats my understanding, having never done it before.

This advice COULD result in data loss, but is probably a good place to start from.

When I installed Linux last time it installed Grub for me and I then had a boot choice from Windows or Linux then from Wondows either XP or 98

Just be wary that if XP SNAFU's and you have to either reinstall or do a reformat of the MBR you will lose Grub and be faced with either reinstalling or reconfguring the Grub loader to get it back again.

Have you considered VM'ing the other OS on the PC using something like Virtual PC?

Originally Posted by rick0361

Just be wary that if XP SNAFU's and you have to either reinstall or do a reformat of the MBR you will lose Grub and be faced with either reinstalling or reconfguring the Grub loader to get it back again.

Tools in XP allow easy fixing of the boot record. Can't remember off the top of my head, as it's many years since I've had to use them. However IIRC, I think FIXMBR (fix master boot record), FIXBOOT (writes new partition table info?) and BOOTMGR (allows editing of which partition will boot), accessible form the recovery console, are the tools I used to repair. Especially if you get NTLDR.EXE is missing error.

No idea if this is the same for Vista though, so may not be of any use whatsoever.