Grub boot problem after dual booting any Linux with Vista
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[SOLVED] Grub boot problem after dual booting any Linux with Vista
I have Vista installed on my 80 GB primary drive. I decided to plunder my server for a 250 GB drive so I can dual boot Linux. Well first I tried Debian. Everything went smoothly except that it didn't detect Windows, so I was left with modifying the menu.lst file to make Windows available. That wasn't too hard. I was able to boot into Windows and all was right with the world. However, after I rebooted to get back into Debian, Grub was fowled up. I would get my bios screen, Grub started to load, then my computer rebooted. Round and round it went until I decided to download Super Grub. I booted to it and restored Grub. I was then able to boot into either Debian or Windows. I booted Debian, then rebooted into Windows. That seemed to work fine again. Once I rebooted out of Windows to go back into Debian, Grub was fowled up again! This time I figured that the Vista bootloader is causing the problem. I boot to the Super Grub and completely uninstall Grub, then I boot to Vista disc and have it repair my MBR. After doing so, I was finally able to boot into Vista normally.
I looked around on Google and couldn't really find any evidence that Vista and Linux don't work. I did find a command that might help - fdisk -l from Linux. So I booted into Linux again after restoring Grub and ran the command. It gave me the following output:
Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0f5c0f5b
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1 992+ 42 SFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 1 9730 78148608 42 SFS
/dev/sda3 9730 9730 88 42 SFS
Disk /dev/sdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0000597e
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 29645 238123431 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 29646 30401 6072570 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 29646 30401 6072538+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
I'm wondering if the small partition (sda1) on my primary drive before Vista is causing the problem?
Has anyone successfully dual booted Vista and any version of Linux? I have tried Debian and Ubuntu so far.
Last edited by aresgodofwar30; 02-08-2008 at 11:27 PM.
Jason, should I boot into Vista, then reboot so the file is mucked up? I think I could then boot to a livecd and access the hard drive and try to get the menu.lst and grub.conf if it exists.
looks almost like an error message to me. Was Vista preinstalled on your hard drive? It seems like you have some recovery partitions or such on the hard drive, which may be the root of your problem. Apparently Vista makes some changes in the MBR of your second hard drive, probably to be able to read it correctly. I would try disabling the second hard drive in Vista (is that possible?) and see if that makes a difference.
Sorry for the delay, I was sick yesterday with a fever. Here is the contents of my menu.lst minus all the commented stuff:
Code:
title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=546d4fcb-8edf-4aed-9f0f-d44023165a32 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet
title Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=546d4fcb-8edf-4aed-9f0f-d44023165a32 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
title Ubuntu 7.10, memtest86+
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root
# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Windows Vista/Longhorn (loader)
root (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
I searched the entire disk for grub.conf and it was not found.
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