Question about grub and Windows

MediocreGopher · 06-25-2009, 12:40 PM

First of all, I know that this topic has very little to do with linux at all, but I don't know where else to go. If it really shouldn't be here, go ahead and remove it, I'll figure something else out.

Anyway, I recently got a laptop with Vista on it (blegh). This laptop is mostly going to be using windows applications (like games, and, when I get to college, engineering software and the like), so putting linux on it, as much as I'd like to, would be kind of a waste of time.

So it has Vista, but Vista can't play TF2 for some reason. I added an XP partition, to play TF2 with. The thing is, XP doesn't recognize Vista, so I can't dual boot the two. The laptop didn't come with a Vista CD, so I can't boot that to repair the MBR. So I decided to try doing it with GRUB.

Grub runs fine, and it boots Windows XP perfectly. But when I try to boot Vista, I get an error saying that the filesystem cannot be read.

Here's some output (yay backtrack):

Code:

root@bt:~# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x03c9ab2c

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1              65        7516    59858190    7  HPFS/NTFS  <-----Windows XP
/dev/sda2            7715       38689   248806687+   7  HPFS/NTFS <-----Windows Vista
/dev/sda3   *           1          64      514048+  83  Linux  <-----Boot partition with grub, I don't know why it's down here, it comes first physically

Code:

root@bt:/media/boot/boot/grub# cat grub.conf
# By default, boot the first entry.
default 0

# Boot automatically after 30 secs.
timeout 30

title Vista
        rootnoverify (hd0,2)
        makeactive
        chainloader +1

title XP
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1

I've also tried it with:

Code:

title Vista
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        makeactive
        chainloader +1

and I get an error about not finding ntldr, which makes me think that that's the correct Vista identifier, which is confusing. But in any case, it should be able to find ntldr, I haven't touched that partition.

Once again, I'm very sorry that this is only remotely linux related, but I don't know where else to go.

mostlyharmless · 06-25-2009, 12:46 PM

Quote:

I get an error about not finding ntldr, which makes me think that that's the correct Vista identifier, which is confusing. But in any case, it should be able to find ntldr

Not finding ntldr is a windows error message, so grub has worked correctly. Usually you solve these things with a windows rescue disk.

google under "ntldr is missing vista"; looks like there are some reasonable hits...
http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm

MediocreGopher · 06-25-2009, 12:54 PM

That's what I was afraid of. I don't have the install/rescue disk. I guess I'll have to....acquire it. Thanks

Do you think you could explain why Vista ended up on (hd0,0)? That makes no sense at all to me. Physically, the boot partition is there, and according to fdisk (for some reason) that is my XP partition. Vista is the last partition, so how did it end up as the first?

[Edit: acquiring, as it turns out, isn't illegal. Windows has thoughtfully made it publicly available]

mostlyharmless · 06-25-2009, 02:01 PM

The boot partition/"active partition" doesn't have to be the first partition. I'm not sure why your partition table has partition 3 with the first cylinders - not that there's anything wrong with that. Did you make the boot partition? Sometimes laptops have a "rescue" partition.

When you boot (hd0,0) you're trying to boot the boot partition, which doesn't have an OS. I presume when you boot (hd0,2) you also get the ntdlr error.

MediocreGopher · 06-25-2009, 02:20 PM

Yeah, I made the boot partition. I was having trouble getting grub on one of the windows partitions, so I used that instead.

booting (hd0,2) gets "Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format". Which is a grub error, so I think it's reading the boot partition as (hd0,2), as there isn't an actual OS on it. Grub's whole naming scheme isn't making sense.

yancek · 06-25-2009, 02:35 PM

Quote:

Grub runs fine, and it boots Windows XP perfectly. But when I try to boot Vista, I get an error saying that the filesystem cannot be read.

You installed xp after vista and xp will not boot vista, by design, unless you go through a number of steps. This is explained on the support.microsoft.com website and you can search there for 'boot vista after installing xp' or something like that.

mostlyharmless · 06-25-2009, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Yeah, I made the boot partition.

The first 64 cylinders were free? Unused space? Weird. Or did you do some resizing of partitions?

MediocreGopher · 06-25-2009, 03:45 PM

Well, the laptop came with two unneeded partitions (although maybe that recovery partition was needed after all :P), so yeah, I've been doing some resizing. I like to leave some unused space in between partitions if I can afford it, for when situations like this come up. That way I don't have to be moving and entire operating system 50mb to the left just so I can put in a boot partition.

Anyway, I downloaded the vista recovery cd, got it from here:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/window...disc-download/

Had to go through it like four times before it decided I didn't need anything repaired, but it did work and I am finally dual-booting vista and xp using grub. Thank you for all your help mostlyharmless!