Ubuntu
ubiquity package

Dual-Boot Ubuntu 12.10 & Windows 7

Asked by Jeremy Loo

I own an Asus A55VM laptop, newly bought, and it has Windows 7 64-bit OS installed into it when I bought it. Intending to use Ubuntu as well, I installed Ubuntu 12.10 32-bit OS onto a Maxtor Portable Hard Drive. It installed successfully.

Whenever I boot, the Asus boot screen appears, which is normal. After that, the screen turns black, and it says: "Windows is loading files" above a grey loading bar. After 5 seconds or so, it gets to the purple Ubuntu boot screen asking me which OS to boot from. I boot from Ubuntu and everything works fine.

However, the next time I boot from Windows 7, I am told that Windows had a problem and it asks me if I wish to run a Repair Software (Recommended) or Start Windows Normally. I simply start Windows normally and everything seems to run ok.

Is this normal? Or is there some way to solve this?

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N1ck 7h0m4d4k15 (nicktux) said : 		#1

I don't know what you have done .. but this is not normal.. no.

The "Windows loading files" message appears when you boot from the DVD of Windows or from a Recovery partition of HDD.

So check the BIOS .. which device is firs to boot ?

If you have the External HDD unpluged , then it boots normal to Windows ?

Two can be the problems here

1) You installed grub bootloader (of Ubuntu) in wrong place

2) You have to change the configuration in BIOS about the first boot device.

Set as first boot device the USB HDD and as second boot device the Internal HDD and see.

Thanks

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

According to:
http://my.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_Performance/A55VM/#specifications

It has an Nvidia GPU and an Intel GPU as both CPU options have an inbuilt GPU which causes all manner of hell in anything except Windows.
http://ark.intel.com/products/64899
http://ark.intel.com/products/65708/Intel-Core-i5-3210M-Processor-3M-Cache-up-to-3_10-GHz-BGA

I have NEVER seen a success story with this and I anticipate you will get very short battery life, a hot running laptop and the CPU fan running a full speed 100% of the time.

There is a project called bumblebee but it is far from perfect, it may help:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bumblebee
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HybridGraphics

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Jeremy Loo (loojeremy) said : 		#3

@NikTh: Erm, the BIOS only has a single Boot Option: Boot Manager. It doesn't allow me to change to anything else. However, when no other bootable options are in place, e.g. Bootable DVD/HDD, it goes straight to Windows 7. When the HDD with Ubuntu is plugged into the USB, it enters the Ubuntu boot manager and I can basically boot Windows 7 anyway...

Number 1 is probable seeing as I have no idea what a grub bootloader even is >.< but I simply installed it into the HDD. I checked and it has a 4GB swap space...other than that, I hv no idea, cause I'm new to Ubuntu.

Number 2 is improbable seeing as my BIOS only gives me one boot option.

Thanks for ur kind attention.

@actionparsnip: Thanks for the reply. As it is now, my battery life is still very good (but maybe its because its new), my laptop is awesomely cool (as in temperature) and my fan seems to be acting normal.

I'll read up on the bumblebee.

Thanks.

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