Enable and Change Default Boot Selection Screen in Ubuntu

I have a little Netbook and I am dual booting Windows and Linux Ubuntu, more specifically Jolicloud ubuntu. So I installed it and everything was fine except for Ubuntu is now controlling the default system that boots and I couldn’t get into Windows partition.

So the solution to the problem is to Modify a file called menu.lst that can be found in the boot>>grub folder. But you can’t do that without root permissions. So I know there is probably a way to do this with a Terminal command but this is how I accomplished changing the default boot on Ubuntu without a terminal command.
The first thing you need to do is create a password for the root and then enable the root login. I found a site that explained that, here is what he said to do.

“Firstly you should set the root password. Login to ubuntu with the user which you created during installation. Go to System> Administration> Users and Groups. Select root. Click on Properties. Set the root password.

Secondly enable the root login. Click on System> Administration> Login Window. Click on Security tab. Check “Allow local administrator login“. Click on OK.
Everything is done. Now logout and log in with your root account.   “

After you are done with that you can log out and log in as the root. Username root and use the password you entered earlier. Once you are logged in open the file system and go to boot>>grub and find the menu.lst file and open it. One of the First paragraphs will mention “Default Num” This is where you want to change the default system to boot. They are numbered starting from 0. So when you look at the Boot menu the first entry is 0 and the next one is 1 and so one. On my system Windows was the sixth entry on the boot list so that makes it number 5. Where it said “default 0” I deleted the 0 and put a 5.

If you look at the paragraph below it that number controls how long it waits to boot the default system. Mine was set to 1 second, which explained why I could not boot into anything else other than the default; I changed it to 30 to give me plenty of time to choose. If you are not sure what number your desired OS is you can just change the timer to give you enough time to figure it out.

Save the document and your done. Now you can restart the computer and when it reboots it should wait longer to auto boot and have your desired OS selected already. I am a Noob when it comes to Ubuntu but it’s starting to grow on me.