Ubuntu – Windows 7 does not boot correctly on a triple boot system with Windows 8(Consumer Preview), Windows 7 and Ubuntu

dual-bootgrub2windows 7windows 8

Currently on my laptop I have Win7, Win8(Consumer Preview), and Ubuntu 12.04. I am having a problem booting Win7

When I boot the computer the first screen I get is the GRUB boot manager screen which has menu entries for Ubuntu and Windows 8. If I want to boot into Windows 7 I have to select the Windows 8 loader and then select Windoes 7 from the windows boot menu.

Due to the Win8 loader being a little silly it then reboots the pc in order to load Win7, however it just takes me back to the GRUB2 and I have to select the Win8 loader again and then Win7 will boot. This is faily long winded and unecessary.

I would much prefer it if I could just add Windows 7 to the GRUB menu and select it from there rather than boot Windows 8, select Windows 7, and reboot again.

My only concern being that Windows 8 has removed/replaced the Win7 bootloader.

Has anyone come across this problem?

Best Answer

create entry in 40_custom(don't remove anything) in directory /etc/grub.d

gksudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom 

add an entry like this

menuentry "Windows 7" {
    set root=(hd0,3)
    chainloader +1
}

Modify the set root value of course. Determine the hdd by typing: sudo fdisk -l . For example, /dev/sda1 is (hd0,1) if its on the second HDD: /dev/sdb1 >> (hd1,1)..and so on. You can understand the syntax from this I guess. After you made the modifications, do sudo update-grub and you can try to boot it. BTW grub actually can't boot windows the only thing it can do is to chainload(to call) windows bootloader.

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