Grub boot problem after dual booting any Linux with Vista

aresgodofwar30 · 02-07-2008, 08:22 AM

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.

teddyt · 02-07-2008, 11:56 AM

Has anyone successfully dual booted Vista and any version of Linux?

Yes, Ubuntu, Fedora, Mepis. No problems at all. Sorry I have no suggestions for your problem.

jasonpower · 02-07-2008, 12:15 PM

What does your menu.lst look like and how did it look after you modified it?

It sounds like there is something modifying your menu.lst without you knowing. Do you have a grub.conf file too or just menu.lst?

aresgodofwar30 · 02-07-2008, 03:08 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.

jasonpower · 02-07-2008, 03:29 PM

Which ever way is fine, mucked up might give me a better idea of what's going on.

Lepakko · 02-07-2008, 04:19 PM

This here

Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.

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.

aresgodofwar30 · 02-08-2008, 07:58 PM

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.

syg00 · 02-08-2008, 09:08 PM

Partition type 0x42 doesn't mean anything to me. Try this

Code:

sudo file -s /dev/sda[1-3]

. If they look like NTFS, I'd change them to 0x7.

aresgodofwar30 · 02-08-2008, 09:35 PM

syg00: here is the output from that command

Code:

/dev/sda1: x86 boot sector, code offset 0x52, OEM-ID "NTFS    ", sectors/cluster 8, reserved sectors 0, Media descriptor 0xf8, heads 255, hidden sectors 2048, dos < 4.0 BootSector (0x80)

aresgodofwar30 · 02-08-2008, 11:27 PM

OK I finally have it figured out I think. On my desktop, I converted my disk to a dynamic disk instead of leaving it basic.

I tested this by dual booting on my laptop which also has vista, but i did not convert that disk to basic.

bad news is that means i gotta wipe out windows and reinstall if i want to dual boot

syg00 · 02-08-2008, 11:43 PM

Ugly ... ...