dual boot win7/slackware 14.2 64bit in legacy mode on gpt disk
 

target: dual booting win7 and slackware64 14.2 on gpt partitioned disk in legacy mode

position/what has been tried
I have a new acer laptop which comes with windows7 pro 64bit preinstalled in legacy mode but on a gfi partitioned disk. If I change to UEFI mode, win7 does not start (it freezes on startup). Installing slackware on some freed up space ( a swap partition and a root partition) has difficulties because it freezes in certain (bios) modes, even booting with the kms kernel option. Because win7 refuses to boot in uefi mode, and manually removing the gpt partitioning and protective mbr and re-writing a "dos" mbr (using gdisk), trying to install windows in legacy mode, windows for some weird reason formats the disk as gpt, I am a bit stuck. I have restored the windows installation, and am going to try getting slackware on again, but am not sure how lilo handles gpt. because windows does not start in uefi mode I can't use the normal eufi partition on the gpt disk for booting.

Question
My question is, can lilo be forced to write to the "boot sector" of a gpt partition, so I can use the instructions here http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/addi...ws7-boot-menu/ in order to dual boot.

According to this SlackDoc, gpt should work seamlessly with lilo.

i tried with lilo and get the following error.
Added linux *
Warning 0x0800: Inconsistet partition table, 3rd entry
CHS address in PT: 0:0:0 --> LBA (-1)
LBA address in PT: 0 --> CHS (0:0:1)
Fatal: Either FIX-TABLE or IGNORE-TABLE must be specified
If not sure, first try IGNORE-TABLE (-P ignore)
I have tried lilo -P ignore but get the same message with an additional
Warning: the partition table is *NOT* being adjusted.
Fatal: Partition entry not found

my partitions (as created by the manufacturers recovery stick (plus my linux parts) is as follows (output from fdisk -l /dev/sda )
The linux entry in lilo is
image = /boot/vmlinuz
root = /dev/sda7
label = linux
and the windows entry is
other = /dev/sda3
label = win7
table = /dev/sda

I have tried with /dev/sda2 for win7, and have tried commenting out the table line as well, but with no success.

According to this, you have your root partition for Linux listed as a "Windows recovery environment". Shouldn't your linux entry be pointing to /dev/sda6? Can you post your whole /etc/lilo.conf?

Also, I see you have an EFI partition. Do you have your "BIOS" in legacy mode so you can use lilo? Otherwise, you'd need to use elilo, if you're doing UEFI booting.

yes, it should, I've fixed it. full lilo.conf below (comment and blank lines omitted as I am typing it in manually). and yes, the bios is in legacy mode (otherwise win7 does not start)

What error (if any) do you get when running lilo with this lilo.conf? If you do get an error, can you post the output of lilo -t -v 2 (it will be a lot of text, it might be better to pipe it to a file and save that file to a usb drive so you can post it here)?

output of lilo -t -v 2 as requested.
(sorry for the delay)

According to this post, you might be able to fix it by running the command on the bottom of this post, however, according to lilo's manpage, you should try to ignore it first.

i have tried lilo -P fix and get the following output

I'm wondering if this is related to the table entry. If Windows installed it's bootloader into the partition header like lilo, it could've been that lilo overwrote it. Unfortunately, it's been many years since I've dual-booted, so I have little experience with it and no experience on fixing it.

Out of curiosity, if you comment out the Windows entry, does lilo work properly?

lilo runs without reporting an error, but on reboot it does not offer the lilo menu, but boots straight to win7!
that is odd. I know slackware runs in uefi mode with secure boot when I add the linux/slackware kernel in the efi partition to the "ok" certificates list, (as I've tried it),but, then win7 doesn't boot, and even with a oem install of win7, win7 doesn't install. I had to revert to the recovery stick.
An update on my remarks of slackware/linux freezing on startup. That appears to be incorrect. It is the built in keyboard which stops working. plugging in an external usb keyboard and it is not freezing. I have been running all the recent tests using an ecternal keybaord. (just mentioning it in case it is relevant)
I will try running elilo instead and post back, even though the bios says it is in legacy boot mode

well, at last here is an update for those that may have the same problem..
I booted from the slackware install dvd, then reinstalled lilo to the mbr, and also separately to root (/dev/sda6), and also ran elilo.
Then I copied the bootsectors to files
dd if=/dev/sda6 bs=512 count=1 of=/linux.bin
dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 of=/linux2.bin
then copied them to a memory stick (as there is no write access to ntfs (or ntfs-3g) from the slackware install image.
then I restarted laptop, which booted into windows (no sign of lilo). I ran bcdedit as per http://alien.slackbook.org/blog/addi...ws7-boot-menu/
On restart, it would boot into win7 but the linux option failed with status 0xc000007b so I changed the partition to \Device\HarddiskVolume1 (which is the efi boot partition), and selected \EFI\Slackware\elilo.efi as the path.
If I select linux from the bcd menu, I still get an error message, but if I press Escape on that error message page, it boots to lilo, and thus to slackware.
So not ideal, but at least I can dual boot. Thanks everyone for the input, including Eric's blog for the bcdedit info. I can only assume that the bios is broken and legacy mode is not a proper legacy mode, but a mixture of legacy and uefi that only works for Windows. At least I don't have to write off the laptop, or run win7 in a vm from slackware, which would be a bit slow for opengl and directx games.

Ouch. I remember using that same solution for that same problem. What a nightmare.

Have you tried using Wine? It works very well for most Windows games. It can run Win32 version of Steam too.

unfortunately wine doesn't play nicely with my favourite windows game, age of empires 2. ( and doesn't work with sage accounts either), and I haven't persuaded myself to go multilib, as I look after a few slackbuilds which need to be tested on pure 32 or 64bit, and use graphics ( so a vm is less ideal). thanks for the suggestion though.

If you install the extensions VMWare Player is quite good as far as graphics are concerned. A lot better than Virtualbox and KVM.