Well, here’s the problem. I have been running a very old Ubuntu version and I am not sure what I have done with it 4-5 years back when thelinuxuser.com was active. I’m now trying to revive the blog as I still see users frequently visiting. For that to happen, the first thing I need to do is wipe out and reinstall Ubuntu in dual boot.
It’s a bit complicated but lets try it out. I am going to document all the steps for here for beginners like me 🙂
First thing first, back up your system. If you are not sure what you are doing, or even if you are sure but it’s been long since you did that, take a back up for your own sake. There is always a chance of things going wrong!
To reinstall Ubuntu in a dual boot, you have to first create a bootable disk or a USB. If you haven’t done it yet, go get a USB drive, download a Ubuntu ISO and burn it using Rufus. You can find the detailed steps in this article :
Create a bootable USB using Rufus
Reinstall Ubuntu in dual boot
Right-o, so you have a USB with Ubuntu ISO burnt on it. Now, plug it in and boot your system using the USB drive. You should be able to get into the boot menu by pressing Esc (for me, Asus) or F8, F10 depending on the manufacturer. Once you are into the boot menu, you would have to select boot from an external device as a the first priority. Restart your system and it will boot into a Live Ubuntu System.
It would look something like this :
This is the installation screen for Ubuntu. When you first boot in, it will ask you to select the OS. Select Try or Install Ubuntu from that list to come here. Next few screens are pretty straight forward.
It will ask you to Choose Language, Accessibility settings if needed, your preferred Keyboard Layout, and a Connection to the Internet. An active internet connection is needed if you want to download the third-party softwares and some multimedia codecs. I will suggest you to do it if you are new to Ubuntu. If not, you can always install it later. Click on Install Ubuntu in the next screen, and select Interactive Installation in the next screen to do it.
Next couple of screens about your preferences towards third party softwares and additional media formats.
In the first screen here, it asks whether you want to install Extended selection. Select yes, since you have downloaded a 5GB ISO file, and it has all the necessary office tools, utilities and web browser. Otherwise, you would have to install them one by one separately. In the second screen, it asks for two options.
- Install third party software for Graphics and Wi-Fi hardware – if you are a beginner like me, go for it. Lets not waste our time later on to identify and install it.
- Download and install support for additional media formats – again, you can do this later on but some of the audio/video formats won’t work by default if you don’t select it.
Next step is the most important part of the installation. I am guessing since you are already on a dual boot, you understand a bit of disk partitioning. Lets go through it. There are 3 options here, the first one will install Ubuntu 24.04 LTS alongside your current Ubuntu system and Microsoft Windows – which we don’t want. We also don’t want to Erase disk and install Ubuntu since it will remove Windows and everything else altogether.
Select Manual Installation and proceed. This is the most complicated part here. Let us understand what it means first. There are 2 devices for me in the list sda and sdb. I have got a SSD and a HDD for my system, so it shows 2 devices, you might just see 1 for yourself. sdb for me is where MS Windows reside, so I am not gonna touch it.
Under sda, the NTFS part is for Windows. If you have just 1 drive, remember a rule – anything that says ntfs shouldn’t be touched. The Ext4 are my current Ubuntu partitions, I have a /home and a root / partition and I have also allocated some swap to my Ubuntu set up. We need to get rid of these, and then partition it back.
Select the root partition (/) and click on minus sign (-) where Change is written. It will then rename to Free Space. Do the same for /home partition if you want a fresh home directory. If you want to keep your old home directory, leave this part as is.
Now select the free space and click on plus sign (+). A window will pop up, something like this. Leave the size to utilize complete size of that free space and select file type Ext4 and Mount point as root (/).
Now, this step is only needed when you need a fresh home directory like me. Do the same with other free space you created by removing your old /home directory.
It will look something like this. I have assigned the 110 GB free space for /home and about 73 GB for Root partition. I am gonna leave the Swap partition as it is.
One very important thing to select the Device for boot loader installation at the bottom. Select your Windows partition here! Basically, you are telling your installer to use the Windows boot manager and not install the Linux one.
Next few screens are simple ones. It asks you to create an account (which would be your root account) and give your computer a name and password. Select your timezone in the next screen, and review your choice in the final screen.
Click on Install to begin the installation process. It will take 40-60 minutes to install Ubuntu depending on your internet speed and the choices you have made for third party softwares. Once done, shutdown your system, remove your USB device and turn it on.
You will find a Ubuntu option in the boot menu. Boot into it and you have a fresh new Ubuntu 24.04 installation. Here’s how it looks.
Wrapping up
To reinstall Ubuntu in a dual boot system, it’s more or less similar to installing Ubuntu along side Windows, the only complication comes when you have to remove and reassign partitions for your new installation. Hope this article clears it up, if not, shoot the problem in the comment section and I would help if I can.
Cheers.
