Now we need the latest version of EasyBCD by Neosmart Technologies – download it here and install. Then, go to “Manage Bootloader” and select “Reinstall the Vista Bootloader”, then “Write MBR”. Alternatively you can send it by email or save it onto the USB memory stick. Then open menu.lst (sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst) and copy/paste it into a text document and save it onto the Vista partition.

Open a terminal (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal). Boot and copy filesīoot to Ubuntu and copy the contents of the boot menu so that it is available in Vista. The next step will explain how to revert back to the Vista boot loader and add Ubuntu as a choice of OS. Unless you want Vista to be in charge of the boot process, you’re done. So far, all should be well and you can boot to Vista or Ubuntu using GRUB. Once the installation is finished, let the system reboot and you will have a boot menu with listings for Ubuntu and Vista. Everything else should be pretty straight forward. You also can import accounts and personal folders from Vista, if the Ubuntu installer detects it. Check you system for booting from USB, usually you have to press a function key to select from possible boot media.įollow the standard installation instruction during the Ubuntu install, choosing the newly created partition as target. Insert the usb stick, or the CD/DVD and reboot. Follow our detailed instructions in this article. Next step is to prepare your installation USB drive, unless you already burned it on a CD/DVD. (If you don’t have enough free space, Vista will not allow you to shrink it and the available space to shrink will be zero) You should have at least 12GB of free space for the new OS, if you don’t have that much it’s probably time for a new hard drive. The Shrink tool will assess how much space you can free up. Right-click on the main Vista partition and select Shrink Volume. If you don’t already have a partition for it, right-click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management. Create a partitionįirst you’ll need space for the Ubuntu installation.

There are some nice utilities we can use to make that process a lot smoother for us. The boot loader that ships with Vista can be a real pain. So you got a computer running Vista and like to dual boot between Vista and Ubuntu. How do we dual boot Ubuntu and Vista, or Windows 7, where you have Windows Vista or Windows 7 installed first.

Add ubuntu to windows bootloader