wubi on windows 7 boots slowly

[Michael Kofler]

Windows 7 normally is installed on /dev/sda2; /dev/sda1 contains only the Windows boot loader

fdisk -l
/dev/sda1 * 1 13 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 13 12859 103186432 7 HPFS/NTFS

wubi installs wubildr to /dev/sda2, but GRUB looks for it in all ntfs partitions; this takes a lot of time (ca. 20 seconds); during this time, the message 'Try (hd0,0): NTFS5: No wubildr' is shown

booting is much faster, if wubildr is also copied to /dev/sda:

mkdir /media/part1
mount /dev/sda1 /media/part1
cp /host/wubildr* /media/part1
umount /media/part1

perhaps this could be done per default; it saved 20 second boot time for me

also, in /etc/default/grub the variable GRUB_TIMEOUT should be reduced to 0; the uses has a choice between Windows and Ubuntu already in the windows boot loader; it is not necessary to give this choice again in grub

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

If there is any extra logic to find out the "right" partition into which install wubildr, without spamming the HD, I will be glad to add that in.

[bcbc (bcbc)]

Agostino Russo:"If there is any extra logic to find out the "right" partition into which install wubildr, without spamming the HD, I will be glad to add that in."

How about choosing the one with the boot flag set? That should solve this.

Although, the lupin version of grub-install will need to be aware of this too - right now it doesn't recognize wubi unless the wubildr is on the same partition as the root.disk (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lupin/+bug/604417)

[bcbc (bcbc)]

I have the same problem on my netbook - but the delay is barely noticeable. Not sure why it takes 30 seconds on some computers, but not others.