After installing CentOS 6 with Win7, computer does not boot
 

Hello,

i had windows7 running on my laptop.
today i installed centos6 as the seconday os. while installing centos, the boot loader configuration window correctly found the windows os as 'other' and continued the installation. now after finished the centos6 installation and when reboot what happens is, computer starts,black screen, boot menu does not come, again restarts. same think is repeating.

but i have a linux boot pendrive i made before this installation as i do not have the cd rom. so now i can boot using the pen drive and load any os. but without pen drive, no way of booting either os.

pls help me to fix the boot loader.

disable secure boot in the BIOS.

and you might want to make sure that win7 has the MBR and install CentOS 's GRUB on the FIRST linux partition ( a small 500 meg partition )
and set that as the boot partition

cent will gladly boot both
but windows7 will never boot cent

Thank you so much folks for the reply.
after i posted this thread, i just went ahead with a reinstall of centos and now it is booting correctly now :D
i am sorry about that.

Thanks for the suggession. so in future if anythign went wrong. ill follow your suggession.
for your information, my linux / partition relies in an extended partition.

Just for completeness and for future readers, with Secure Boot enabled neither Windows 7 would have booted before the CentOS installation nor would have the CentOS installation even been possible.

Not true at all, if you do it right any Windows version (at least NT and later) will boot Linux without a problem.

Thanks TobiSGD for the additional piece of information!

Is CentOS the only OS on that machine now; skoda?

Or are you in a dual boot with Win's 7?

both. re installation actually fixed the boot loader issue.

That's good news!

So....now when your laptop boots you get your GNU Grub Menu and you have the option to be automatically be booted into CentOS first?

Just to confirm: can you see your Win's partition listed in your GNU Grub Menu?