dualboot vista 64 and linux?

[looper]

ok. i have a working ubuntu 8.10 and windows vista . however, i can only boot vista from a supergrub cd. how do i remove grub from the windows drive? i think thats the only thing holding me back from a good dual boot.

thanks to everyone that replied, i really appreciate the help.

[yancek]

how do i remove grub from the windows drive?

When did this happen? Nothing anyone suggested you do would put Grub on the windows drive. In fact, I thought you had the drive disconnected? My post #8 suggests an entry for windows in your Grub menu.lst file. As I indicated in that post, this entry is predicated upon your having that drive set to boot FIRST in the BIOS!! If that's not the case, it won't work. With that entry and your correct entry for Ubuntu, you should then be able to boot either OS with the 2nd drive set to boot first! If you dis-connect the second drive, you should still have your windows bootloader intact and be able to boot windows. Also, GRUB does NOT boot windows, it just point to the windows bootloader.

Your last paragraph in post #9 is confusing, seems contradictory. You should be able to select which drive to boot first.

[looper]

sorry about the mixup. when i first installed ubuntu i had windows as the main hardrive. when my screen went black in ubuntu after changing resolutions, i just formatted the linux drive completely. i forgot that grub was installed on the windows drive. when i reinstalled ubuntu i had the windows drive disconnected so it installed a new grub on the linux hardrive. makes sense sort of? lol. i have the linux drive set up to boot up first now and added the code you posted to menu.lst. however when booting it goes straight to ubuntu. if i boot from windows hardrive i get "error 17" message. with supergrub cd i can boot windows normally.

thanks for your patience and replies yancek.

[yancek]

Run the command "sudo fdisk -l" in terminal again to see if the output is the same as in your post #7 above. If it is, change your vista entry to:

title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

If this doesn't work, post back and let us know if your fdisk -l output is the same as post #7 and if not, post the change. Also, post the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst file, you can leave out any lines with a hash mark (#) to the left.

If you had Grub previously installed on the drive that now has vista, you will need to repair that either with your vista CD or by downloading and using EasyBCD from neosmart technology.

The error 17 you get on trying to boot the first drive: Cannot mount selected partition
This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB.

this usually happens when Grub can't mount a partition, such as ntfs, the "rootnoverify" entry usually takes care of this.

What do you mean by "it goes straight to Ubuntu", do you get time to make a selection, you can change the default entry in menu.lst (remember Grub counts from 0, not 1) as well as the timeout.

[Jonathan183]

if i boot from windows hardrive i get "error 17" message. with supergrub cd i can boot windows normally.

You can put the Windows bootloader code back on the Windows hard drive using SuperGrub. You may find with Grub on the MBR the Windows CD will not work

That should allow you to boot to Linux or Windows by selecting hard drive to boot from in BIOS ... fdisk output and contents of menu.lst file referred to by yancek are required to allow boot from grub without having to swap BIOS boot order. EasyBCD should let you setup dual boot using Windows bootloader ... personally I'd use Grub.

[looper]

fdisk -l output

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00046fa3

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       37460   300897418+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2           37461       38913    11671222+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5           37461       38913    11671191   82  Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5d36eaad

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1        1919    15414336    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2            1920       38913   297154305    7  HPFS/NTFS

menu. lst

# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
#            grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
#            grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
#            and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.
# WARNING: If you are using dmraid do not use 'savedefault' or your
# array will desync and will not let you boot your system.
default		0

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout		3

## hiddenmenu
# Hides the menu by default (press ESC to see the menu)
hiddenmenu

# Pretty colours
#color cyan/blue white/blue

## password ['--md5'] passwd
# If used in the first section of a menu file, disable all interactive editing
# control (menu entry editor and command-line)  and entries protected by the
# command 'lock'
# e.g. password topsecret
#      password --md5 $1$gLhU0/$aW78kHK1QfV3P2b2znUoe/
# password topsecret

#
# examples
#
# title		Windows 95/98/NT/2000
# root		(hd0,0)
# makeactive
# chainloader	+1
#
# title		Linux
# root		(hd0,1)
# kernel	/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda2 ro
#

#
# Put static boot stanzas before and/or after AUTOMAGIC KERNEL LIST

### BEGIN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
## lines between the AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST markers will be modified
## by the debian update-grub script except for the default options below

## DO NOT UNCOMMENT THEM, Just edit them to your needs

## ## Start Default Options ##
## default kernel options
## default kernel options for automagic boot options
## If you want special options for specific kernels use kopt_x_y_z
## where x.y.z is kernel version. Minor versions can be omitted.
## e.g. kopt=root=/dev/hda1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8=root=/dev/hdc1 ro
##      kopt_2_6_8_2_686=root=/dev/hdc2 ro
# kopt=root=UUID=a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2 ro xforcevesa

## default grub root device
## e.g. groot=(hd0,0)
# groot=a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2

## should update-grub create alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. alternative=true
##      alternative=false
# alternative=true

## should update-grub lock alternative automagic boot options
## e.g. lockalternative=true
##      lockalternative=false
# lockalternative=false

## additional options to use with the default boot option, but not with the
## alternatives
## e.g. defoptions=vga=791 resume=/dev/hda5
# defoptions=quiet splash

## should update-grub lock old automagic boot options
## e.g. lockold=false
##      lockold=true
# lockold=false

## Xen hypervisor options to use with the default Xen boot option
# xenhopt=

## Xen Linux kernel options to use with the default Xen boot option
# xenkopt=console=tty0

## altoption boot targets option
## multiple altoptions lines are allowed
## e.g. altoptions=(extra menu suffix) extra boot options
##      altoptions=(recovery) single
# altoptions=(recovery mode) single

## controls how many kernels should be put into the menu.lst
## only counts the first occurence of a kernel, not the
## alternative kernel options
## e.g. howmany=all
##      howmany=7
# howmany=all

## should update-grub create memtest86 boot option
## e.g. memtest86=true
##      memtest86=false
# memtest86=true

## should update-grub adjust the value of the default booted system
## can be true or false
# updatedefaultentry=false

## should update-grub add savedefault to the default options
## can be true or false
# savedefault=false

## ## End Default Options ##

title		Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid		a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2 ro xforcevesa quiet splash 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic
quiet

title		Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic (recovery mode)
uuid		a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-7-generic root=UUID=a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2 ro xforcevesa  single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-7-generic

title		Ubuntu 8.10, memtest86+
uuid		a2274399-578c-4ea1-89bd-426bc53b08f2
kernel		/boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST


title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

that last part does not allow me to start vista at all. the previous one did, with supergrub cd of course.

[MikeTbob]

Try changing this

title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

to this

title Vista
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
chainloader +1

Post back any errors you might find.

[MattS]

Put the following entry for vista in the menu.lst file:

title Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd1,1)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

What goes in the menu.lst file when using the vista bootloader to boot linux?

[yancek]

You should probably start your own thread.

If you want to boot whichever Linux distribution you have with the vista bootloader, I would suggest you download EasyBCD from neosmart technologies. Just google it. It seems to work for others.