Ubuntu Feisty on Wubi on WinXP Pro

This time I want to tryout Wubi (Windows based installer for Ubuntu). My objective is to install Ubuntu and create a dual boot system on my existing WinXP machine without having to repartition my hard drive. I’m very fond of virtual machine idea (Vmware, Xen & Microsoft Virtual PC) but so far I found out that there are severe performance hit on my pc at home (AMD Athlon XP 1800 & 256 RAM) whenever I use virtual machine and I finally decided to use dual boot instead.

Extracts from the Wubi website

Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a few clicks. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.

I will try to install Ubuntu Feisty 7.04. Firstly I grab the Wubi installer.

Optionally, you can download the Alternate ISO (ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso) first from ubuntu site or any nearest mirror or even using torrent. Put the iso file in the same folder as the EXE installer. The installer will detect for alternate iso and use it for installation, if not it will download the iso first (600MB++) before starting the installation process.

Launching the EXE installer file and you will be presented with the first installation screen

Fill in your preferred username and password then click setting to customize your installation environment.

Then continue with the installation

You will then need to reboot your pc

During the boot up, a multi-boot option will appear where WinXP listed as the default OS and Ubuntu right after it. Unfortunately in my case once I selected Ubuntu, an error message came out and I cannot boot the Ubuntu at all.

ERROR 17 FILE NOT FOUND

Referring to Ubuntu Forum here and here I managed to overcome the issue.

• Download contig and use it to defrag the wubi folder (in my case C;\wubi)
  

  contig -v -s c:\wubi

• Download the latest grldr file (grldr_ntfs.zip) provided by ‘bean123′ in this thread. Unzip it and copy glrdr file into your c:\ drive replacing the existing one.
• Move both c:\wubi\boot and c:\wubi\disks to the root directory of the same drive, c:\boot and c:\disks respectively
• Edit c:\menu.lst changing all references to directory /wubi/boot to only /boot
  

  title Ubuntu
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/grub/menu.lst
  configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

• The same goes to c:\boot\grub\menu.lst file
  

  ## ## End Default Options ##

  title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic find=/boot/linux ro quiet splash
  initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
  boot

  title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic find=/boot/linux ro single
  initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

  title Ubuntu, memtest86+
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

  ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

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

  title Ubuntu (Original Kernel)
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/linux find=/boot/linux setup_iso=ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso quiet splash ro
  initrd /boot/initrd
  boot

Restart the pc and select Ubuntu again, and here goes my Ubuntu Feisty….