I had some requirements which made me decide to install K-Ubuntu with parallel Windows-7 OS. I made some free space on a separate partition and booted the system with a bootable pen-drive with K-Ubuntu_16.04. The problems that occurred are as follows :

1. After installation when I restarted the system, the was no boot-loader for K-Ubuntu. If there is a pen-drive in one the USB slots, K-Ubuntu boots up as per the boot-order. Else if there is no pen-drive then Windows-7 is booted up automatically.

2. When the Windows-OS boots up, I am unable to find my D: drive (which,by the way was not the K-Ubuntu installation target drive.) which was a totally independent drive with my movies and other stuff.

While K-Ubuntu boots up from pen-drive, all the drives are present and accessible in the Ubuntu file-explorer. All I need is a K-Ubuntu OS selection option boot-loader screen and all partitions should be available on both the Operating Systems.

It is a high probability that there is not a boot-loader showing up for OS because the K-Ubuntu was nevr properly installed in the first place.

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1 Answer

From the situation it seems a bit clear that the installation of Ubuntu OS (K-Ubuntu,in this case) was never completed on the desired machine/partition. For if it were successfully done, there would have appeared a grub-menu for OS selection which would list all the Operating-Systems installed on the HDD.

Secondly, about the partition which was untouched during Ubuntu installation and still can't be seen in the windows-explorer, it is so because that partiton was made a swap-partition forcefully during linux/ubuntu installation. Since, you cannot access any partitions with linux files on it through a Windows-explorer thus, this partition also goes invisible when one tries to search for it in Windows-OS.

So,following steps would successfully install a Linux flavor on the desired partition keeping other partitions visible as well as accessible in Windows:

1- Shrink the existing partitions and create a pool of free space for Linux/Ubuntu installation and swap-disk allocation.

2- Create a New-Volume for swap purpose from the free-space created in the first step. This disk should have memory equal to the physical-memory (RAM)the target machine. For further clarification regarding swap-memory reservation check this thread.

3- System now must still have some free-space left (linux/ubuntu os will be installed on this free-space). This should be kept around 20-30 gigs. I myself kept it to 50-GB since i had a list of installations coming my way on the linux/ubuntu OS. Leave this space as free.

4- Make a bootable external-drive with the desired OS (K-Ubuntu 16.04, here).I would recommend Rufus.

5- Move up the extrernal-disk to the top on boot-priority list from the BIOS.

6- Restart the system with external drive in place and initiate the Ubuntu installation process.Manually setup the installation-partition and swap-partition. Select the 'free-space' you created earlier as the primary partition for Ubuntu-installation and hit next.

7- A prompt will ask to confirm if one wants to allocate a partition for swapping or not. This is where you have to hit the back button and select the New-Volume that was created earlier. Hit Install and sit back while the ubuntu gets installed.

8- Restart the system without the USB. A boot-loader menu will ask you to select an OS to boot with. Select Ubuntu and patrol the whole OS to check if everything it working smooth.

9- Restart the system and boot the Windows-OS. Check for the partitions you expect to be visible and accessible.

You would not be able to see the partitions where Ubuntu/Linux is installed and the partition allotted for swapping. Remaining partition would be accessible and writable permanently.

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