Arch Linux

Shedexx

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Dual-booting Window 10 from syslinux

Hello all,

I have recently finished installing Arch and run it alongside Windows 10. I installed syslinux to be able to properly choose the OS on startup.

I followed the guide on the wiki to setup graphical boot managing (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … _boot_menu) and it's working fantastically so far. I can choose arch and archfallback and it will boot.

Now, I am trying to also include Windows. sdc2 contains the Windows boot partition from which I want to load from using chain loading.

sdc           8:32   0 931.5G  0 disk 
├─sdc1        8:33   0   529M  0 part 
├─sdc2        8:34   0   100M  0 part 
├─sdc3        8:35   0    16M  0 part 
└─sdc4        8:36   0 930.5G  0 part

I followed the guide "Chainloading a disk's MBR" (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Syslinux#Chainloading_a_disk's_MBR) from the same page and wanted to use the MBR identifier, which I got using fdisk.

fdisk -l /dev/sdc2 | grep 'identifier'
Disk identifier: 0x500a0dff

I then added a new label and menu entry into syslinux.cfg, which looks like this:

...
LABEL windows
        MENU LABEL Windows
        COM32 chain.c32
        APPEND mbr:0x500a0dff

Upon restarting, the Windows menu entry appeared, but the boot failed with the message

Unable to find requested MBR signature

I then tried out the other method of using disk drives and partitions, i.e.

...
LABEL windows
	MENU LABEL Windows
	COM32 chain.c32
	APPEND hd2 2

Every combination I tried out (hd0-hd3, 1-4) failed (who would've thought that guessing does not work) and I don't know how to find the correct combination or how to use the MBR identifier.
When I manually boot into windows using boot priority on startup, everything works fine, so I don't think there's anything wrong with Windows.

How can I fix it? Have I missed something important?
Thanks in advance

Last edited by Shedexx (2020-01-08 18:23:18)

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 13,368

Re: [SOLVED] Dual-booting Window 10 from syslinux

Windows bootloader expects to be on the first drive reported by firmware.
In order to start from another drive special settings are needed.

Try adding swap to the line with MBR idenitifer, see
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Sy … ther_drive

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky

Shedexx

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Dual-booting Window 10 from syslinux

Try adding swap to the line with MBR idenitifer, see

LABEL windows
        MENU LABEL Windows
        COM32 chain.c32
        APPEND mbr:0x500a0dff swap

is failing with the same error. The MBR signature should be correct tho, that's why I'm so confused...

schard

Forum Moderator

From: Hannover

Registered: 2016-05-06

Posts: 2,178

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Dual-booting Window 10 from syslinux

Shouldn't you use the disk identifier from the disk (/dev/sdX) instead of the identifier of a particular partition (/dev/sdc2)?

---

Inofficial first vice president of the Rust Evangelism Strike Force

Shedexx

Member

Registered: 2020-01-07

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Dual-booting Window 10 from syslinux

I reverted back to GRUB and it's working now, no reason to use syslinux then.