XP/Redhat Dual Boot Problem
 

Hiya,

I'm having some trouble dual booting using the NTLDR method - NTLDR is doing its job fine, it seems that dumping the boot sector for linux is where its going wrong...

I'm doing dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 and it works fine, but the file is just 512 zeros.

Exact details of what i've done so far are -

• Installed Redhat 9 on the second partition (ext3) of my master drive with XP already on the first partition.
• Chose to instal LILO into the beginning of the partition.
• Dumped the beginning of the second partition to /bootsect.lnx.
• Mounted the first partition of my drive (FAT32) as vfat and copied the /bootsect.lnx file over.
• Added C:\bootsect.lnx="Redhat 9" to C:\boot.ini.

I get the NTLDR menu when I boot but when I choose Redhat 9, the screen clears and nothing happens (which is what you'd expect from a file of 0's).

My guess is that somehow LILO didn't get installed into the beginning of the partition... if this is correct, how exactly can I install it in there? I've looked at man lilo but it doesn't say anything about installing to MBR/beginning of partition.

Many Thanks,
Spookie.

It just might be LILO. Why don't you try installing GRUB, they're both bootloaders and though I haven't used GRUB, I'm guessing that they should work the same as LILO.

Did you actually run lilo before doing your "dd if=/dev/hda2......"
command?

You need to run /sbin/lilo to make it install the bootsector to the selected partition (make sure you actually selected /dev/hda2! check boot= in lilo.conf).

http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm is a useful tool for setting up multiple boot sectors using the NTLDR menu. Not only will it update the menu for you, but it doesn't require you to copy the bootsector from the partition using dd. It uses its own special boot to boot lilo off of the given partition.

It's working, thanks for the help :).