Ubuntu : Dual booting w/XP using Grub bootloader | editing bootloader in Ubuntu

This recipe will explain how to edit the Grub bootloader while in Ubuntu. This will explain how to remove the recovery and memtest and also set XP/Windows as a default OS.

The first thing i did after my ubuntu install was to clean up my GRUB bootloader menu. Basically I wanted to remove the recovery mode and just make the bootloader show XP and Ubuntu.

Editing the GRUB bootloader on Ubuntu.

1. open Terminal, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal

2. in the Terminal window/commandline, type: sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

2a. you probably will be prompted for your password or the admin password, type it in and hit enter.

3. the menu.lst file should now open in the terminal window. you can navigate via the arrow keys. lets remove the recovery mode entry and the seperator for the windows bootloader (i installed ubuntu after having xp prof already setup).

find this section:

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot


you can remove the bottom two items if you like (recovery mode and memtest) and also can rename the way title for the first one (i like to remove the kernel version since its clutter to me).

if you have windows installed prior (and possibly after ubuntu, i have not tested personally), you can also remove the label seperator and also edit the windows entry to the OS name itself.

below the ubuntu options we looked at above, you should see something like this:


# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
# title Windows Bootloader
# root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Windows XP Tablet Ed 2005
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


you can remove the Windows Bootloader from the divider section and in turn make the windows entry below the 1 os for defaulting (see later).

also, i edited the title entry to be my actual windows version/os.

4. finally, lets setup the default OS option in the GRUB menu.lst file, this option is at the very top of the file. it is the

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
default 0


so if you removed the recovery mode entry, memtest entry, windows divider entry; ubuntu = 0 and xp tablet = 1

5. Once you have made all of your edits, hit CTRL+X to exit, and then choose Y to save and then hit Enter to overwrite the current menu.lst

6. reboot to test it out. have your ubuntu live cd ready just in case. 🙂 you can always go to terminal via the live cd to correct the menu.lst problems. just use the command from step 2.