Arch Linux

burk

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2007-06-17

Posts: 46

Not able to dual boot to windows

Hello

So this is the story. I had a hard drive with both xp and arch installed, booting either of them from grub. Then christmas came and I got a new hard drive. I installed windows xp first and then arch. XP fixed the windows boot loader of the first hard drive and added a new option there, so that I could boot both installs from it. With arch i made a grub install to the second hard drive. Now I want to boot the new windows install from the new arch install, but it just doesn't work.

When I select windows in grub it just shows the commands it has run and hangs. This is my menu.lst:

# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst

# general configuration:
timeout   5
default   0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sda5 vga=773 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux Fallback
root   (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdb5 ro
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img

# (2) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

And this is what fdisk -l gives:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500106780160 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0005f09c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        9138    73400953+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            9139       15665    52428127+   b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3           15666       35246   157284382+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           35247       60801   205270537+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           35247       37204    15727603+  83  Linux
/dev/sda6           37205       40990    30411013+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7           40991       41121     1052226   82  Linux swap / Solaris

My theory is that there's something missing from the windows install because it added an option to the boot loader of the old hard drive instead of making a new boot loader on the new hard drive...

Thanks,
burk (:

watsonalgas

Member

Registered: 2007-01-15

Posts: 92

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

I think you said you installed GRUB on the new hard drive, is this correct?  I think you need to still install GRUB to the original MBR, if you still have that old XP install and can still boot to it.

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

Hello. 

An excellent page on grub is here:  http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p15.htm.  He has a lot of information on dual booting and using multiple disks.  You may find the section on using grub's command line interface useful to see how grub views your disks.  Also take a look at:  http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthre … did=143973.  Anyone who can boot 100+ OSes really knows their grub!

burk

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2007-06-17

Posts: 46

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

watsonalgas: correct, but I installed it to the new MBR because I wanted to scrap the old hard drive. The problem is that now that I have disconnected it I can no longer boot to the new windows install (I needed XP's own boot loader on the old hd to do that). I think I found the problem on the first link tigrmesh wrote:

The default Windows method for multibooting is to copy the new installation's vital files needed for booting into an older, existing Windows installation in a primary partition. Then the newer Windows install will be made in a logical partition without any bootloader file of its own. Needless to say, if the user ever has a problem with the older operating system it means the newer operating system will be ruined too. For more info read this link,  Understanding MultiBooting and Booting Windows from an Extended Partition Dan Goodall

Now I just need to know how to fix it... Do I need to use windows' fdisk /mbr and then reinstall grub?

tigrmesh

IRC Op

From: Florida, US

Registered: 2007-12-11

Posts: 794

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

Do I need to use windows' fdisk /mbr and then reinstall grub?

What I would do is use super grub disk.  Hermanzone has a good page on using it.

dopewalker1

Member

Registered: 2007-10-24

Posts: 11

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

Not sure if you've been able to fix this, but I had the same problem when I installed Arch on a second HD after removing Ubuntu. I always had the Windows on the other hard drive but upon removing Ubuntu and installing Arch, I had to reinstall grub which may have affected the grub installation on the windows HD. I was able to fix it by putting this in my menu.lst:

# Windows
title Windows
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

This worked for me!

burk

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2007-06-17

Posts: 46

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

Mapping is only a solution if you have to different hard drives. I had two before but I removed the oldes one, so now I have one, with both windows and linux.

I have burnt Super grub disk to a cd now, but haven't tried it yet.

burk

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2007-06-17

Posts: 46

Re: Not able to dual boot to windows

Finally, I got it to work again! I found out that it was more of an windows issue than a grub issue. I used the xp disc to repair my windows install and then reinstalled grub, so now it's working again