No alternative boot offered after installation: XP as usual!

Submitted by nickc on Mon, 04/05/2010 - 13:56
in


Hi all,

I've just installed Ubuntu on a desktop drive already running WinXP. Installation went smoothly and I can see from within XP Disk management that the C drive now contains two new partitions, labelled "Healthy (Unknown Partition)" and I assume Ubuntu is installed on these. However, when I restart the pc it boots straight into XP; I don't get an option to boot Ubuntu. From the little I've read (I'm a complete newbie to Linux) I think this could be because the pc is still using a Windows bootloader rather than the Linux one (Grub??). The situation is complicated by my inability to access the BIOS setup as it asks for a password which I don't have.

Please advise where I should go from here.
Cheers!


OK, problem sorted now

Submitted by nickc on Thu, 04/08/2010 - 13:28.

OK, problem sorted now thanks. I discovered I wasn't using the latest version of Ubuntu, so I ended up deleting the Linux partitions with the Windows Disk Manager, then re-installed Ubuntu using v.9.10. The same problem occurred, but by then I'd found help on the Ubuntu site, as others had clearly encountered the same issue. A bit fiddly as I'm not familiar with Linux, but following the instructions exactly did the trick, so I'm now a happy new Ubuntu user, able to boot into either operating system as I choose.