booting ubuntu from media direct and windows 7 fresh dual boot on dell xps 1330

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This post tells you about how i achieved a special “dual” boot -> ubuntu from media direct button  and windows 7 from the regular power button on dell xps 1330.

In the usual installation ,one would install windows 7 first and later install ubuntu. In this usual method, GRUB 2 would be the default boot loader and upon selecting windows 7 from the option list provided by the GRUB while booting,Windows boot loader would be called.Here,if you are selecting windows 7 ,you would be loading both GRUB2 and then windows 7 boot loader as well which would increase the System boot time.

Why did i decide to boot ubuntu from media direct button?

1. Media direct button enables you to watch movies and other entertainment media without booting your operating system.and i never ever used it from the day one,so it was almost useless i can say.
2. By booting ubuntu from media direct you need not use two bootloaders ( grub2 for ubuntu and windows loader for windows7) which saves little boot time of both Operating Sytems.
3. I think its cool to have different buttons on the keyboard to boot different OS instead of selecting them from the boring  list as usual.

How to boot ubuntu 9.04 from media direct button and Windows 7 from power button?

Step 1: Take a Back-up of all the files which are important to you as we are going to format the entire hard disk.

Step 2: Boot from Media Direct CD which you got along with your laptop.My Media Direct version was 3.5 .you will          presented with 3 options. choose the second one.you will be asked to specify size (in GB) for your system.

My hard-disk size is 232 gb.I am linux newbie and i feel 32 gb is more than enough for Ubuntu.So i choose                               200Gb  for Windows 7 and pressed “enter”

Step 3: After Hard-disk partitioning is completed by the system at the end of step 2 ,you will be asked to insert                      Windows   7 Boot DVD.Insert it and then Press Enter.Now you will be booting Windows 7.Press Install and                              follow On   Screen Instructions till you are prompted to choose partition to install Windows 7.

You should find  the following information if you have correctly followed above steps.

• OEM Reserved Partition (40 mb)
• System partition (200gb)
• logical partiion(28gb)
• Media Direct (3 gb)

Step 4: Since i wont be using Media Direct Partition i deleted it using ” advanced” option  and merged with logical                 partition .So ,i had 3 partitions now instead of four and choose to install windows 7 on System                                                     partition.Complete the On-Screen Instructions and Install Windows 7 on your System.

Step 5:Now,boot using Ubuntu  CD and choose “Install Ubuntu” ,a follow the onscreen Instructionstill you will arrive at                 partition table.Now Choose Manual partition .

• Create a primary  partition of size 30 gb of type ” root”  ( ”   /   “). and format should be ext4
• Create another partition of size 2gb of type “swap”

Step 6: This is the most Crucial Step ,so pay attention.At the end of Step 6/6,you will find a “Advanced”  Button at Right                  Bottom of the Screen.click on it ,and select “install bootloader” from the drop down  to  the partition which                            contains your linux root. In my case, it was  ”/dev/sda3″ . and Press Install

• OEM Partition  ( /dev/sda1)
• System Partition(  /dev/sda2)
• Linux Root Partition( /dev/sda3)
• Swap Partition  (/dev/sda4)

Step 7: After Installation is complete ,boot into windows 7 and insert Dell Media Direct CD. Open cmd.exe in administrative mode and type the following command.

Code:

cd\

d:

CD dellkit

rmbr DELL  2 3

where 2 is the partition number  of windows 7 and 3 is the partition number  of Linux Root.

follow the above steps exactly for achieving this special dual boot smoothly.

Step 8: [Optional] if you dont want the Grub Menu to be displayed as you boot into Ubuntu;then boot into Ubuntu. Open  a terminal.login as  root.type gedit /etc/grub/boot and change the value of TIMEOUT from 10 to 0.and type update-grub at the terminal and restart.

Things Not Recommended:

• Dont use Guided Installation offered by Ubuntu ,create partitions manually
• Dont use logical partition for creating Linux root partition,use “primary” only.
• Never ever Press Media Direct Button until the entire process is complete.

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