Hello, I have installed Elive /Debian on my Acer laptop and it is working great (beautiful functional linux distro) having Windows7 first, however I have lost the ability to also boot Windows7. I have the GRUB boot manager installed on a my primary Linux partition, but would like some instruction on how to configure so that I will also have the option to boot Windows7, adding it to the list on the GRUB boot menu...

I have deleted the windows Recovery partition because if used it would recover back to an earlier version of Windows. I will eventually resize the ntfs partition and create another logical drive on that partition for a windows image. So here is a list of partitions;

unallocated ..............10 Gib
/dev/sda2 ntfs.........126.8 Gib Windows7
/dev/sda3 linux-swap....2.93 Gib
/dev/sda4 reiserfs......6.83 Gib Elive
/dev/sda1 ext3..........2.50 Gib Want to use as /home directory for linux

Thanks for your help,
Bptknx

You could've kept recovery patition and installed grub to / on sda3. Will windows boot without recovery parttition?

Add to /boot/menu.lst and run grub on your controlling distro.

Good to go!

Edit: Just to add, the "(hd0,1)" is telling you the first drive, second partition (numbering starts at zero).

Hi Eddy1,
I am pretty sure that Windows can boot without the recovery partition, however since I am new to Linux I am nor sure how to install grub to sda3 / . Any instruction would be appreciated. Thanks

Go into your controlling distro (the one managing grub).

sudo nano /boot/menu.lst

use the arrow keys scroll down to after the Linux entries (you will see them).

Enter what I placed above.

Hit ctrl+x hit enter twice and it will be saved. Reboot and Windows should be there, scroll to windows on the list and see if it works.

Depending on whic linux os you choose you really don't have to manually partition prior to installation, just make sure that there is empty space on drive. After you install a linux os you'll be able to go back and see what partition formats look like. If you're a real newbie like me, I'd sugsest installing something like linuxmint, suse, Ubuntu, because they have an installer that will direct you on installation. You can play with partitions after you get a feel of the different systems.

Two things to consider,you should have your windoze on the first partition sda1 which if its legacy GRUB is (hda,0) and if its GRUB2 its (hda,1).

Next: you are only allowed 4 primary partitions and you have used them all so your unallocated 10GB is unusable,so you have to turn one of the partitions into an extended one, into which you can add more logical partitions.

Hi corbintechboy,
Thank you for the help... As it was, I did not have sudo access and had to research how to configure adding myself to the sudoers list... after that, it was simple to edit the .../grub/menu.lst file as you instructed and achieved duel boot with Windows 7. I also expanded the Windows partition eliminating the unallocated space, and gaining 10Gib. However the Windows master boot record was corrupted, so I fixed that with a Windows 7 install disk. Bptknx