Hi there, I'm an ubuntu newbie,

I have successfully installed Ubuntu 9.10 onto my external hard drive and I think it's great

However, I have windows vista installed onto my internal hard drive and that's the reason I have ubuntu on my external,

I tried partitioning my internal hard drive and successfully shrank it down leaving unallocated space available,

I then restarted my computer and the boot screen left me with an error, meaning vista couldn't be loaded, so I had to use my recovery disk to reinstall it

So I eventually installed ubuntu on my external hard drive, this is great except for the fact I need to have the external hard drive plugged in to boot my computer even if I only want to go on windows,

Is there a way around this? Possibly by moving an ubuntu boot file onto my windows hard drive or something?

Thanks in advance

Rowan

 

Listen bud, you're going about this all the wrong way.
Download Wubi. Google it and then install.

Wubi lets you install and dual boot windows and ubuntu, but it does all the confusing stuff for you!
Try it, it's never given me any problems!

Good luck and PM me if you need more help.

 

Use, Wubi, no need for partition, what it does, is it makes a virtual hdd on your main hdd, biggest it can go is 30gb, and it will add a option to your windows boot loader to start Ubuntu. so when you press power, it will say start Windows Vista, or below that it will say Ubuntu, and you use the arrow keys to choose which one you want, and if you dont want ubuntu anymore, you can uninstall it.

 

yea do what Antoligy say,
Install vista(bad idea-> install 7 and if not wanna pay use "remove mat(replace m with w, did it to bypass another warning for it XD)") then make vista install smaller with live ubuntu and gparted then install ubuntu on free space with the desktop shortcut.
after that you will restart and see options for linux(other modes and standard mode) and windows

 

Not to mention that if there is a power outage, most likely you'll corrupt the file system.