Simple XP Dual-Boot *ooops*

HW, you should be ashamed of yourself! Corrupting a perfectly good Windows operating system and Forcing. It. To. Boot... MEPIS!

I don't think Uncle Bill will be happy

Jon

The simplest dual-boot is simply to let the installer put Grub in the MBR. Then you'll get a grub screen asking you which you want.

Yes, I agree that is the simplest way. Nevertheless, when Windows starts being temperamental and shutting down with the blue screen of death, it makes me look a little harder for a way to let Windows think for the most part that it's alone in the world.

I submitted this how-to precisely because installing Grub in MBR was causing me problems.

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we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends

Just curious. What problems with Grub? I've heard of "Grub error 18" with old BIOSES - can usually be fixed with BIOS settings for the master drive. I've never had a problem booting to winxp with grub.

Your use of the phrase "temperamental" suggests that you got the grub menu OK but when you slected windows it started to boot but crashed?

If used Grub successfully with many dual boots, so I'm interested to know what has happened.

To muddy the waters, I much prefer LILO, the previously popular Linux loader. It was simple and direct and self-contained, unlike grub. But very few distros use it any more. Not as "powerful" though.

I think Windows bootloader is best for new users:
1) Linux may not recognize special partitions -- diagnostic, DVD play, etc. -- these partitions are activated by use of a particular key during boot, and a Linux boot (GRUB or LILO) seldom recognizes this.
2) Sometimes Mepis does not rewrite the MBR correctly on the first few tries. I don't know why.

This said, I think use of bootpart makes setting up the Windows boot loader for dual boot much easier.

Mike

Hi,

I'm really not sure what the source of my problem is any more. Windows seems to be getting worse and worse. I started getting the blue screen of death more frequently. And I've been having troubles keeping Linux up and operating.

I have a "system reinstall" disk that came with my computer, and every time I have to reinstall Windows, I have to wipe the drive clean and go through three hours of updating, just on the Windows side (its a pre-SP2 install). Now, after re-installing Mepis on this side, I can't get Synaptic or Firefox or Thunderbird or Gaim to work (there's a long conversation about this in "Lost connectivity on Gaim and Thunderbird)(that was the original problem, now I've lost all connections except Konqueror and Kweather and Real Player).

So I can't get the Mepis side updated, because I'm not familiar with command line. I've got simple internet connection, I can ping, etc.

Windows no longer boots. It keeps turning into the blue screen and going back to the original screen. I never get to the desktop.

I'm going to come back home after work tonight and see if I can get Linux back to where it was when at least I had Gaim contact with friends. And I really prefer Firefox. I need a Linux geek sitting right here to tell me why some of these programs connect and others don't.

*edit*
Just needed a little more time. I've got this "disaster" ramping mechanism, and when I run into a glitch, I keep waiting for my entire computing world to come crashing around my shoulders.

It's connected again. I can't get to Windows yet, but it's not lost, it's still there. I didn't need any geeks but the one who comes home and spends his evenings digging through forums )
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we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends

That is the problem right there.

Without any other OS on my systems it reboots at will, win2000 pro could not even finish loading after much trial I figured it must be my computer hardware so slightly before purchasing a new computer I loaded a linux distro just for kicks, and never looked back.

I later descided to load WinXp with dual booting with linux using grub and only to play a game that will only seem to run on windoze.

Loaded the windoze on the hda1 and setup all hardware, rebooted a zillion times or so for each new hardware drivers,as windoze requires, then installed my virus software and rebooted a zillion more times for
updates for the vius and the winxp software and drivers.
Finally got to the good part.

Installing Simply Mepis.
Installed and asked me to install grub on MBR I selected yes.

restarted computer without CD in drive and up came grub, I selected kernel 2.6.10 and boom up and running and on the net in no time.

I then restarted this time selecting winXP and all appears to work OK

Why fool around with WinXP bootloader which is no made to see other OS types anyhow really.
I'ts made to boot to other Win OSes etc.

Also Linux should be able to see all types of Partitions, and windoze well, cannot.

Windblows cannot even see a linux partition unless xp now allows it to see it.

But all the other winblows have never been able to see my linux partitions.

So I don't really understand what the problem would be for you using grub to dual boot and allows your Mepis install to install on MBR
the windblows will continue to be there and should work as it did by itself.

So, I've got some kind of glitch in my Windows boot.ini. It, of course, has the record of the old Grub boot from before I moved it back to MBR. So, now, I currently have no way to access Windows. Grub gives me the Windows option, but when I try to log onto Windows, I continue to get a very brief blue screen of death and the return to the BIOS screen. This happens at the transition from the "running LEDs" to the "happy" blue screen.

Since my system is on a set of 3 distribution disks that came from Toshiba, I don't have that "fix mbr" option that other people keep talking about. You put in the CD, and you can either "reinstall the factory settings" or not.

If I could get into the NTFS file system, I could copy the boot.ini from the Windows CD into wherever it goes in the HD. But I don't currently have any way to access it. The only way I could find boot.ini without running Windows would be an arduous GUI search.

BTW, I tried to do a Safe boot, but got the same blue screen. One of the last successful boots gave me a warning message that some orphaned file had been returned to it's proper address.

So, if I could get a happy Windows boot system, I'd be happy to support the "put Grub in MBR" battle cry...

As it is, well, I can't log into Windows, and, well, is that so bad?

--

we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends

Or you can download "Linux Defender" - a live CD that comes with "captive ntfs" that allows you to write ntfs systems. Other live CDs have this, too, but not Mepis. (I tried to install in Mepis once and failed).

But I'm not really convinced that any of these will help.

How far does your windows boot get? I guess not far enough that you can hit "F8"?

I like your "good riddance to the Evil Empire" approach.

Hello HW,

There is a command that exists in Linux called install-mbr. It exists in my installed version of Mepis and it exists on the current Knoppix disk. I don't recall if it exists on the Mepis Live CD, but my guess is that it does. Anyway, one thing you might try is to install a "generic" MBR and then fix that. The following command was brought to my attention by one of my current favorite fix-it books Knoppix Hacks.

Boot your system using the Live CD, log in as demo and open a terminal session (Konsole). At the command line enter:

sudo install-mbr /dev/hda

Replace /dev/hda with your drive if you are installing to other than hda. At this point, when you reboot not using the Live CD, you will most likely NOT get into Mepis since the master boot record now should only start whatever's on your first partition /dev/hda1 which should be Windows (eww). If THAT WORKS, then you can go back and put GRUB back in place.

Jon

This thread is IRONIC!

I've got Windows back and fixed, I've got Grub back in MBR where it belongs. Now I can go to Windows to check up on instructions I'm giving to people who are trying to get across before the Big Ship starts charging them more for their voyage.

One interesting "oops" on the way. I ran

sudo install-mbr /dev/hda

from a mounted HD. I didn't notice the advice to boot up to Live Cd first. Anyway, it worked fine. Hmmm. A change to the mounted HD boot...

So, that gave Windows a chance to get to it's "rescue" screen and check the disk and fix a few things up.

Then, delightfully, when it started back up I got a series of pop-ups about the troubles I'd been having and did I want to send a report. And the "Your computer may be at risk. There seems to be no virus detection installed." And did I want to find the driver for that unknown piece of hardware in the PCMCIA slot?

"You need help, kid, Billy's army of multimillionaires need income. We can work something out here."

Interestingly, it took a simple CLI fix to get access to Windows. Uh, maybe Bill should be paying folks rescue data fees...

I'm gonna go fix the first post in this thread now

Thanks Jon

--

we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends

I've got two PC's that I've been trying Mepis on.

It always messes them up so that they won't boot windows anymore when I install the Grub bootloader. Once this happens, other linux distros won't install properly either.

My old solution was to run the XP recovery console and use tools like makembr and fixboot to get Windows back again.

My new solution:

Install Suse 10.0. For some reason, it seems to fix the problems caused by Mepis using Grub. I've had to do this on two PC's lately (install Suse to fix boot problems caused by Mepis).

Then, I can install other Linux distros afterwards (Kanotix, etc.) using a Grub Bootloader with no problems booting into Linux or Windows.

I don't want to learn about Grub. I just want a PC that boots both Windows and Linux (and Mepis seems to really mess up my PC's so that Windows is no longer usable). Why? I don't know, and I don't care.

I have just removed Mepis from my wife's laptop, and it now runs Windows again after installing Suse (thank you Novell).

I then overwrote the Suse install with Kanotix. I'm not going to install Mepis again on any PC's until I can confirm that it will work with an HP PSC1400 Printer I bought. I spent *far* too much time messing around with it (and still couldn't get it to work).

Kanotix 2004-04 RC17 works fine with it (as does Ubunto and some other distros).

Jim C.

I'm sorry to here people having any problems with Mepis at all.

I must say all my computer seem to just work and never mess up an install of Windows.

I alway install windows first, then either resize the partitions and make room, or partition properly to begin with.

Then install Mepis and let grub write to mbr and BOOM it installs and Sets up Windows in the bootloader Everytime.

Some software just does not like some computers thats what I'm finding out