Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

Tycon712 · 2011-03-29 04:28:39

I have a hard drive that I have installed Windows XP on using UNetbootin.
However, when I turn on my computer and see the GRUB BIOS menu where I can select an OS, I don't see Windows XP or anything related to the hard drive.

How do I get the hard drive to be recognized by the BIOS so that I can run XP from the GRUB menu?

I have reformatted the hard drive using fdisk, setting the filesystem type to FAT32 (for Windows XP),
created the filesystem with mkfs, and made sure it mounted on startup with fsck:
fdisk /dev/sdb
mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
fsck -f -y /dev/sdb1
Then, I used UnetBootin setting the iso image to an old XP iso I've had, and setting the drive to /dev/sdb1

What am I forgetting or doing wrong here?

Last edited by Tycon712 (2011-03-30 03:08:43)

admiralspark · 2011-03-29 09:20:49

Maybe to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst to have a windows entry? Yknow, the entry that's commented out at the bottom of the default file? And make sure the rootnoverify is set to the correct partition!
Use a livecd/liveusb to edit the menu if there's no linux there. Oh, and doesn't Unetbootin use syslinux? Where did grub come from?

Which makes me think this through again....how are you booting it? Are you trying to boot from an external harddrive? If not, again, why is grub showing up?

stqn · 2011-03-29 12:26:12

Ok, first, UNetbootin was not designed to install Windows... When you're talking about "an old XP iso", do you mean a pre-installed Windows partition iso? If it's an installation iso, it won't work.

Then Grub and the BIOS are two different things. To add Windows to your Grub menu, do as admiralspark said (and "man grub" and/or look at the wiki...)

Tycon712 · 2011-03-29 20:00:29

Sorry about the confusion. What I meant was the startup menu (after you power the comp on) where you can select the different OS's. The iso is probably an installation iso, so I guess this puts the whole being able to boot from the hard drive at a halt.

I have edited the /boot/grub/menu.lst file to:
# (2) Windows
title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Which made it bootable, but since the iso that I thought would work, isn't going to work, its not going to boot from the startup menu.

I've searched quite a bit on how I should go about making my external hard drive able to boot XP from the startup menu, but I must be dumb, because I can't find a simple guide online to do this. Could you guys point me in the right direction or give me pointers on how to make the external hard drive bootable with XP? Sorry if this annoys you; I hate asking people questions when there probably has already been a forum post on the subject.

stqn · 2011-03-29 21:24:00

Being able to boot XP from the grub menu is easy, you've done the necessary changes already. What's missing now is... Windows itself . Windows installation is probably off-topic for the Arch Linux forum, and I'm not sure of the best way to do it... If you have an installation CD and a CD drive, you could set your BIOS to boot from your second HD and then install XP there. If you don't have a CD drive, you could use WinSetupFromUsb, but this tool requires a working Windows install itself...

Edit: the idea with setting the external HD as the boot drive is not to actually boot from it, but to make the Windows installer believe that it is the first HD... I'm not sure that it will work for an external drive, actually.

Last edited by stqn (2011-03-29 21:26:39)

Inxsible · 2011-03-29 22:44:56

If you install Windows after you have installed Arch, it would put the windows bootloader in the MBR thereby erasing grub. After installing windows, make sure you re-install grub to be able to boot into Arch.

Tycon712 · 2011-03-29 22:45:04

I'm assuming this means I should restart, select "Windows" from the startup menu, insert a Windows CD (I just found my Windows 7 CD ) and follow the installation instructions from Windows.
And this won't erase any of my data on my first HD that I have booted with Arch?

Inxsible · 2011-03-29 22:47:33

only if you install it in the correct hard drive. as always be careful and backup everything that you think is important.

Tycon712 · 2011-03-30 00:19:18

Tried installing Windows 7 on my external HD, but it stopped and said that I cannot install Windows on a drive that is connected through USB and that I needed a NTFS file system for it.
I'll make a partition with a NTFS on the drive and try to install it again. Hopefully, it'll work this time.

Tycon712 · 2011-03-30 02:46:28

Alright, so I think I'm going to give up on this idea,
unless someone can tell me how I can make the external hard drive bootable from the start menu if it has a NTFS (something required by Windows 7).
I've tried:

fsck -t ntfs /dev/sdb1

and it says "fsck: fsck.ntfs: not found". It's just another problem after another. And I thought I was so close to getting it to work.

Tycon712 · 2011-03-30 03:08:06

Yeah, I tried the tip from the Grub wiki to make the Windows install think that it is on the first drive.
Didn't work.

Apparently Windows 7 can not be installed on a HD that is connected via USB:
"Windows cannot be installed on this disk. Setup does not support configuration of or installation to disks connected through a USB or IEEE 1394 port."
For lack of better words, I will mark this thread as SOLVED.

Arch Forums needs to start another trend other than the common use of "SOLVED". We ought to include "FAIL" and post that in the title when there is no solution.

thisoldman · 2011-03-30 03:11:30

Make a bootable linux USB installation and then install Windows 7 on the USB drive using VirtualBox?

I haven't tried it. It sounds ugly. It might work.

stqn · 2011-03-30 12:29:52

You could of course copy your existing Arch Linux install to your USB disk and then install Windows on your internal disk...

(Before copying, add "usb" to the HOOKS list in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and rebuild the initramfs - please see man pages and wiki for better information. Then boot from a live CD/USB and copy your Arch installation with "cp -ar" to your USB disk. Then fix the fstab on the new disk if necessary. Then add an entry to the grub menu on your original install so that you can check that you can boot from the external disk. If it works then you can install Windows on your internal disk and then boot again from a live CD to reinstall grub. I may be forgetting something or have it wrong somewhere, I have never done that.)

Or simpler: install both Windows and Linux on the internal disk. (You can use gparted to resize/move partitions.)
Or even better: don't install Windows. It's a pain.

Tycon712 · 2011-03-30 16:38:51

haha thanks stqn.

I think I'll just stick with Arch for the time being until I have some time this summer, when I don't have my college courses to worry about.
The reason why I wanted to have Windows bootable on my HD was that I needed (and still do) Windows so that I could install a version of Adobe's Creative Suite, which requires a lot of memory.
I didn't want to bloat my laptop with Windows and I'm not sure if Wine will let me run a version of CS smoothly.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-29 04:28:39

Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#2 2011-03-29 09:20:49

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#3 2011-03-29 12:26:12

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#4 2011-03-29 20:00:29

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#5 2011-03-29 21:24:00

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#6 2011-03-29 22:44:56

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#7 2011-03-29 22:45:04

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#8 2011-03-29 22:47:33

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#9 2011-03-30 00:19:18

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#10 2011-03-30 02:46:28

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#11 2011-03-30 03:08:06

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#12 2011-03-30 03:11:30

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#13 2011-03-30 12:29:52

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

#14 2011-03-30 16:38:51

Re: Booting a Hard Drive (loaded with Win XP) from startup [SOLVED]

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