Once you have installed Ubuntu becomes your default operating system. This means the next time you start your computer or laptop, among the choices Grub presents to you, Ubuntu will start on its own unless you specifically scroll down to another operating system, Windows, for instance.
Many people running Windows XP or Windows 7 install Ubuntu just to test it, and otherwise they want to keep using Windows. For them it becomes a problem. If they forget to choose the operating system, the computer boots using the currently installed version of Ubuntu. But you can change that. Ubuntu 10.04 uses Grub 2 to manage your operating system menu list. The next time you boot your machine, note down the list of operating systems (including recovering versions). All the menu items have different numbers associated with them. The first menu item is 0, the second, 1, and so on. Your Windows operating system should generally be 4 or 5. After that, let Ubuntu load.
After it has loaded, open the Terminal windows (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal Window) and execute the following command:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
It opens up the file that takes care of your Grub menu list. There are different settings over there. The one you are interested in is GRUB_DEFAULT. So whatever default operating system you want, assign it the value of that operating system. For example, if you want Windows to be your default operating system and its value is 4, you must have
GRUB_DEFAULT=4
Save the file, and issue the following command in the Terminal windows to update Grub:
sudo update-grub
There also comes a graphical user interface for managing Grub boot order menu settings in Ubuntu. It is called the Startup Manager. The interface is quite intuitive. If it is not already installed, you can install it using the Synaptic Package Manager. Search for “startupmanager”.
Once it is installed, you’ll probably find it at System->Administration->Startup Manager. You can use it to change your default operating system in Ubuntu
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