Editing the MBR

Jonny69

Jonny69

Jonny69

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I've been a silly boy and installed Linux as a second boot option. It's put itself in the MBR which means that to boot to Windows I have to catch it in time and scroll down FIVE :mad: options!!!

How do I edit the MBR? I want Windows as the first option and Linux second, naturally :D
 
Jonny69 said:
I've been a silly boy and installed Linux as a second boot option.
Click to expand...
Nothing silly there, boyo ;)

You dont want to edit the MBR, you want to edit the bootloader settings. What bootloader are you using (probably Grub/Lilo)?
 
Steady on mods, I just slated Linux in a roundabout kind of way and you moved my post into LOS! They're not going to help me now are they :D

I thought the bootloader was in the MBR? Let me check, I'll have to do a reboot to find out...

Edit: Grub
 
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Unfortunately, this is where it belongs ;)

Ok, you should find the grub config in /boot/grub/grub.conf. Back this up, just in case, and open it in your favourite editor. Firstly, I guess you want to up the timeout for your selection;) The timeout = xx line is what you need to up. To change the default booting OS you need to alter (you guessed it) default = . Now, I'm more a lilo man myself, and I cant quite recall how the numbering works for the default entry. Think it just matches the number of 'titles' you have, in sequence.

And, if I'm also not mistaken, you dont need to reinstall Grub after changing the file. Though that will need confirming.
 
Ok, good so far, had a delve through the files. I can find a file called menu.lst in the /boot/grub folder whch seems to be the boot loader as it contains all that has been mentioned above. Two things though, I tried to create a copy but there's no paste function in that folder, I can open it in text editor but it is read only and I also can't "save as" a copy like menu.000 for my backup. The read only box is greyed out too so my user doesn't have permission to edit that file.

Do I have to log in as an administrator to edit this file? Is there an admin account pre-loaded? I'm using Ubuntu if that's any help.
 
Yep you'll need to be admin to change it, go to terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and type: sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst and when it ask for a password, type in your username password (the password you use to login to ubuntu with).
 
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