Arch Linux

prk

Member

Registered: 2009-12-22

Posts: 3

Dualboot - arch + vista

Alright, so here is the deal:

I've got a Sony VAIO laptop, with windows Vista preinstalled on it. I want to keep it, therefore, I used gparted to shrink the partition size and installed arch on it.
Everything linux-ish is working perfectly, but GRUB doesn't want to boot Vista (saying that "file not found")

This is the setup of my partitions:

sda2 - Vista
sda3 - Arch + GRUB

And I'm wondering what's the problem.
I think that the problem might be, that sda3 is being set up as the bootable partition and I definitely can't set both of the partitions as bootable.
Did this ever occur to anyone?

The grub menu.lst entry of Vista:

50 # (2) Windows
51 title Windows Vista
52 rootnoverify (hd0,1)
53 savedefault
54 makeactive
55 chainloader +1

toad

Member

From: if only I knew

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,775

Website

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

You looked at this? http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dualbo … bystep.htm - oops, says exactly what you have... Sorry, I have no experience of dual booting with windows.

Last edited by toad (2009-12-22 10:24:54)

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AngryKoala

Member

Registered: 2009-01-22

Posts: 197

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

That ought to work.  I dualboot Vista and Arch as well.  Try to boot the Vista dvd and repair the start files.

If that does not work, I've had to use a workaround before, installing EasyBCD on vista, making it the default bootloader, but only having vista in the options, then reinstalling grub as the main bootloader afterwards.  Good luck

prk

Member

Registered: 2009-12-22

Posts: 3

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

Alright, tried playing a little bit with it and found out the real problem (but not the solution)

It seems that the partition somehow "broke" and GRUB doesn't detect it as the windows one. Tried the VAIO Recovery stuff, but the only thing it told me was that "Drive C: Not found".
So, even though I guess that I'm at a wrong place right now, does anyone know a solution?

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

Let's have the output from fdisk, e.g.

fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x95aa95aa

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        4013    32234391    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2   *        4014        4031      144585   83  Linux
/dev/sda3            4032       14593    84839265   8e  Linux LVM

That's mine. Vista on the first partition, ext2 /boot on the second and encrypted LVM with everything else on the third.

prk

Member

Registered: 2009-12-22

Posts: 3

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7a391e41

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        2012    16152576   27  Unknown
/dev/sda2            2013       35156   266229180    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *       35157       38195    24410767+  83  Linux
/dev/sda4           38196       38499     2441880   82  Linux swap / Solaris

sda1 is the VAIO recovery tool, sda2 is vista.

vacant

Member

From: downstairs

Registered: 2004-11-05

Posts: 816

Re: Dualboot - arch + vista

That looks fine. If you can mount your vista partition somewhere (ntfs-3g) and Windows files look OK then try repairing the Windows boot loader on sda2 e.g. following this or this.