Some BIOS don't really like to always try to boot on an external USB drive. In such a situation we will create a screen displayed at boot that will allow to select which operating system to startup. We will use BURG which is have nice looking graphical interface. This solution will modify the MBR of the HDD you have then to pay a particular attention on the action proposed in this chapter.

First, create symbolic links vmlinuz and initrd to the latest kernel and initrd image

cd /boot *
ln -s vmlinuz-... vmlinuz
ln -s initrd.img-... initrd.img

Mount the /boot partition of HDD:

umount /boot mount /dev/sda2 /boot

Install BURG on the system:

apt-get install python-software-properties
add-apt-repository ppa:n-muench/burg
apt-get update
apt-get install burg

Configure BURG to run from the internal disk:

Edit /etc/burg/30_osprober and append the keyword exit at the beginning of the file.

Edit /etc/burg.d/10_linux and append the keyword exit before the last while.

Update custom menu to boot on Linux or Windows™:

menuentry "Linux" --class ubuntu {
  insmod ext2
  set root=(hd1,2)
  linux /vmlinuz quiet splash
  initrd /initrd.img
}
menuentry "Windows" --class windows {
  set root=(hd0,1)
  chainloader +1
}

Edit /etc/default/burg and uncomment GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_RECOVERY="true".

Apply the configuration:

update-burg

Here is the screen that will be displayed at startup:

The theme use for this boot screen is available in this archive: http://xberger.free.fr/downloads/fortune.tar.gz

Untar in /boot/burg/themes/ and execute the command update-burg and reboot.

At next boot, hit t and select fortune.

The full startup menu is available on the USB key. You should select to boot on the USB key and hold shift to access to the following menu.