Hello all,

I am new to linux but not new to PC's.

I am self taught in everything i know so far.

I have an issue i am looking for some guidance on, i have burned an ISO copy of AVLinux & booted from the Live DVD.

chose to install on partition & created all the necessary file systems etc with GParted then proceeded with the install.

Completed install but when i try to boot no joy.

I have EasyBCD installed on Vista to manage to boot processes.

I am able to get to Grub4dos window & grub> prompt.

I have tried many commands of which i have identifeid the partition is there as correct filesystem, when running the /vmlin....TAB command it locates the name of the linux distro, if i set the drive partition to makeactive it boots up saying no operating system them have to change it back to Vista.

I have two pics that show the grub configuration reading from the live DVD, the install appears to have some missing or not right as opposed to the DVD, can anyone assisst how i can fix this issue?

Do i have to copy each file over manually from the Live DVD's folders?

Cant attach images here so here is the differeneces,

these are the listing on the Grub configuartion being read using the Live DVD,

1. /etc/grub.d
2. /boot/grub/device.map
3. grub-install
4. grub-mkconfig
5. grub-mkdevicemap--device
6. grub-mkfont
7. /boot/grub
8. /boot/grub/grub.cfg
9. /etc/default/grub

Here is what way they are on Live DVD,

1. Present
2. Present
3. Present
4. Present
5. Present
6. Present
7. Present
8. Yellow information bubble
9. Present

My install on partition,

1. Present
2. Yellow information bubble
3. Red X bubble
4. Red X bubble
5. Yellow information bubble
6. Present
7. Yellow information bubble
8. Yellow information bubble
9. Present

what do i need to do to remedy this?

i have attempted the install on couple of different drives, no success.

Most people let grub manage the multi-boot, rather than using a multi-boot tool on the Windows side. That doesn't mean your choice is wrong. But it does mean fewer people will know exactly what you need to do to fix the results.

It is possible the EasyBCD is set up for some older version of grub than you have on AVLinux. I don't know details about either EasyBCD or AVLinux.

Any multi-boot system should be able to hand off control to any other boot system, even with zero understanding of the target boot system, by a process known as chainloading. I don't know how you configure EasyBCD to chainload an OS it doesn't understand. But I do know a key step you might have gotten wrong while installing Linux to make it possible to chainload to it.

Somewhere during the Linux install, you get a choice of where/whether to install the first part of grub. The default location is the mbr of your first hard drive. Obviously you did not chose that (or EasyBCD would no longer work at all). For chain loading, you would want that installed to the partition that is or includes your Linux /boot directory (the /boot partition if you have one and the / partition otherwise).

If you did not install the first part of grub at all then you can't chain load to it.

Not enough pertinent info.
Boot the DVD in live mode, then go here and do as it says. You should be able to double-click the downloaded file (in Nautilus) to expand it. Then run the script and post the RESULTS.txt it generates - you should (now) be able to attach it, or just paste it (all of it) in-line if you have to.
This will allow us to see what your boot environment is, and why you may be having trouble.

thanks for your reply, EasyBCD does hand it over to Grub, Grub then can identify the kernel & filesystem as being there, confirms also when i command to make it active, it just appears many of the necessary grub files are not being found.

i chose to install to the partition the OS was installed to, the linux installer said this was the Safest choice, so being cautious as i have a huge amount of data on the drive that i partitioned i followed the safe choice.

should i try to install to MBR & remove easy BCD?

will that mean i will have grub come up with option of booting into vista or avlinux as easyBCD did?

I am not sure myself what the issue is as i can get to grub> prompt, input commands which return results that system is there but cannot boot.

what i forgot to say was it keeps coming back to Error8: Kernel must be loaded before booting.

You need to reinstall Grub since you indicate you do not have a boot directory or a grub directory and then of course, no boot menu (grub.cfg) Not sure how that happened. EasyBCD points to a location on the system looking for the boot files so the fact that the kernel is where it should be doesn't matter since it is looking for boot files and they are not there. I would agree with the suggestion by syg00 above, run the bootinfoscript and post the output here.

hi all,

found a solution to my issue, may not be for everyone as it is for USB sticks and not HDD installs.

i downloaded this,

http://www.easy2boot.com/

turns out to be very useful tool, will force a boot if it encounters an issue with any of the ISO's

but where no issues is encountered it boots up very quickly.

very handy and working fine for me with multiple ISO's on large USB