Hello guys. I'm thinking of getting a new dell Lap top with Vista on it. I'll be partitioning the drive and installing Windows XP. I hate propriety software. I'm only getting windoze coz i want to look up bill gates skirt and see what color of underwear (maybe even a thong) he's got on. My problem is I've heard that vista takes record of the Master Boot Record(MBR) and if it's tampered with it won't boot. Fine. How do you get the grub in?? I've been using Linux for quit some time now and the grub works more effectively on the MBR than on an external drive or on a partition on the HDD. Can someone pls help me out. If there is anyway i can pass vista and still use the MBR it'll be cool. Thanx and think out of the BOX.

Silly talk. I've installed a triple-boot (Vista-XP-Ubuntu) on a laptop long ago, without any problems. Why would it not boot? Of course if the bootloader is broken it won't, but come on, there are loads of 3rd party bootloaders people might want to use, and even Microsoft can't force you to use their bootloader only (it's your pc, not theirs). They just had to alter their desktop search because it didn't give room to other choices, so...

Go on with GRUB, works great. Where did you hear Vista would not boot without it's own bootloader?

Hey bouncer if you dont mind me asking, I have a post I put up that is below this one a little bit and im trying to do the same thing but vista/BT2. Can you tell me what you did? Like how should I partition and how to set it up for dual boot? If you wouldnt mind taking a look at my post its called "vista dualboot". Thanks for the help

I have also triple booted windows vista my own distro of linux and mepis. You just install windows visa then reinstall your boot manager. aka grub lilo. I have to say tho ive only used grub as I find it a better bootloader but I don't know of any issues with lilo.

Just install as you always have.

It should be noted the new loader with Vista is much more amenable to loading Linux if you feel that way inclined - no more copying the boot sector record across, and fiddling around.
Go find easybcd - and it's dead simple.

Well one thing I had read said to NOT put the lilo/grub in place of the MBR on the vista partition but to do it in the "/" partition of linux. So does it matter one way or the other? Is one way recomended more? I guess the result I am looking for other then everything working and being reversable (if needed in the future) is that when I start my computer I want to be able to select right away if I want to boot linux or vista.

Thank you all for the help

It depends upon how you wish to do it.

If you want to use Windows' bootloader (BCD), then you would install LILO or GRUB to your Linux / partition.

If you want to use LILO or GRUB, then you would install LILO or GRUB to the MBR of the first hard drive.

The stanza required in a LILO or GRUB configuration file for Windows Vista is the same as you would use for XP, 2000, 98, etc.

Sounds like the author confused the disk's MBR with the partition's boot sector. To be clear, the one on the partition is usually referred to as a secondary bootloader. MBR is on the very first sector of the disk, before any partitions, and in fact holds the partition table itself.
No, not really. But it's a lot easier to get GRUB working with Vista than getting the Windows bootloader working with Linux, or any other OS for that matter.
To reverse the process you'll need to boot your Vista DVD, click repair your computer, get to the command prompt from the system recovery dialog, then type

Well actually i do have a disk that is linux based, dont remember what its called but it actually will fix the vista MBR and all that. Its a real slick and worked great when I was doing some other stuff so I could just use that. Well thank you for the help maybe I will get my BT2 installed this weekend now.

Use Vista's disk management tool to shrink the NTFS partition and create "unallocated freespace" of the size you wish your Linux partition to be. I have installed Fedora Core 6 and Fedora 7 this way on two Sony VAIO laptops.

Well the only issue there is that HP doesnt ship their laptops with disks anymore. But I have been told I can call them and order them to give me one and they will, so I will do that one of these days.

???
Uhm....

I've dual booted various distroS with vista putting grub in mbr and everything went ok,it always dualbooted..so i suggest to put grub in mbr,it'S the easiest and more immediate way during installation..ONLY DON'T DUAL BOOT VISTA AND MEPIS 6 OR 6.02 'COS IT CAN'T RECOGNIZE VISTA AND WON'T LET YOU BOOT ! I EXPERIENCED THIS PROBLEM WITH MEPIS !

For the rest:i actually dual boot vista and sabayon 3.26 without problems and with wireless support and with grub in mbr,i also dualbooted with vista without problems and with wireless support these distros:1) mint kde 2.2 2) Mandriva 2007 spring 3)knoppix 5.11 4) open suse 10.2 so i suggest you to use sabayon

Try take a look here:

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/about78184.html
http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_b...nstalled_first

Good luck !

Awesome I have my partition made the way that site shows, so when I goto school today I will take out my beloved BT2 cd and give it a shot. thanks for the help

Well I gave it a shot. Pretty much everything went just fine. But the one issue Im having is that when I start my computer BT2 would automaticly boot up rather then grub or something coming up. I booted up to the live CD and used the installer, did I miss something? I had to use Super Grub to fix the MBR so now linux is installed but of course wont boot. Did I not install grub or something though? what did I miss?

Thanks for the help

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sorry for my ignorance but...BT2 what means?what stands for ?
i have to know before answering