New dual boot setup

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by Earthling, Apr 25, 2008.

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  1. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    MudCrab:

    Both are identical SATAs
     
  2. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    I think we are really close to finally solving this. I think I understand what happened, but if you want to be methodical then I suggest proceeding as follows.

    Manually configure to boot to XP. You will need the grubinst_gui.exe file on your XP OS to be able to reinstall grub4DOS to the MBR of Disk 1. Do the install and then reboot the machine to a grub command prompt and search for your tag files. If you see them as expected:

    (hd0,0) XPTag.txt
    (hd0,2) VistaTag.txt
    (hd1,1) VistaPETag.txt

    then the experiment in post #26 was done by booting from the VistaPE disk instead of the main disk and its results have confused us all.
     
  3. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Mark:

    Ah, you posted that while I was setting up the test. The only thing is I installed Grub4DOS to the Disk 1 MBR from Vista rather than from XP. I didn't think it made any difference which you used.

    The results, if they are still useful, are exactly as you just predicted.
     
  4. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    That confirms my suspicions. The test in post #26 was just done when booted from Disk 2 instead of from Disk 1.

    I thought that I understood what was happening after writing post #25 but after seeing the test results in #26 I got really confused and stopped until we cleared things up.

    Do you know how simple it is to fix this? All that is needed is to change the menu.lst file to refer to the partitions correctly. XP is (hd0,0), Vista is (hd0,2) and VistaPE is (hd1,1) when booted from Disk 1. Please double-check my edits to be sure we have this correct in this edited menu.lst file:
    Code:
    # Custom grub4DOS menu for Earthling
    # Rev. C with corrected partition references and makeactive statements
    # 4.27.2008 K0LO
    
    # Other splash image files are available in VistaPE \Boot folder; rename to suit
    splashimage /gentleblue.gz
    
    # Timeout in seconds before default operating system boots
    timeout 10
    
    # Default OS from choices below. Numbered starting at zero
    default 0
    
    # GRUB numbers disks starting with 0, partitions starting with 0
    # (hd0,0)=first primary partition on disk 1
    # For partitions, 0=primary 1, 1=primary 2, 2=primary 3, 3=primary 4
    # 4=logical 1, 5=logical 2, 6=logical 3, 7=logical 4, etc.
    
    # For reference, these are the partition designators for your disk
    # (hd0,0) Windows XP
    # (hd0,2) Windows Vista
    # (hd1,1) VistaPE on Disk #2
    
    title Windows Vista
    root (hd0,2)
    makeactive
    # Hide XP, unhide Vista
    hide (hd0,0)
    unhide (hd0,2)
    chainloader /bootmgr
    
    title Windows XP
    root (hd0,0)
    makeactive
    # Hide Vista, unhide XP
    hide (hd0,2)
    unhide (hd0,0)
    chainloader /ntldr
    
    title VistaPE
    root (hd1,1)
    # Unhide both XP and Vista
    unhide (hd0,0)
    unhide (hd0,2)
    # Since VistaPE is on second hard disk, use map commands
    # to fool it into thinking it is running from the first disk.
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    chainloader /bootmgr
    
    # Memtest86+ memory test program
    title Memory Test
    kernel /memtest.bin
    
    # Get a grub4DOS command prompt
    title CommandLine
    commandline
    
    title Reboot
    reboot
    
    title Shut Down
    halt
    If you simply replace the menu.lst file on the XP partition with the above file then all should work correctly.
     
  5. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Mark:

    What can I say? I must have been a bit tired/confused when I did that.

    I will set it up tomorrow and have every confidence, now I have some understanding of the boot process, that it will be successful.
     
  6. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Bernard:

    No apology required. Actually, I'm glad that my theory about scrambled partition tables was incorrect. If it had been the cause, it would have pointed to a bug in GRUB or in grub4DOS. This is a much better outcome and so simple to fix.

    Hopefully you will be completely successful tomorrow. Philosophically, it is sometimes good to struggle with something because if it's simple then you don't learn anything. You've probably got a much better grasp of the PC boot process now after having done this.

    Paul, I'm glad you took a look at this because you nailed the cause. I hadn't thought of the partitions making sense from the perspective of the other disk. That was the clue that helped solve this.
     
  7. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    I agree. I've had enough of "scrambled" partition tables with TI 10.

    You're welcome. I was following the thread from the beginning, but you were doing so well I didn't need to add anything. As I said, I've run into the GRUB vs. Linux vs. Windows disk order detection and don't trust it. Too many drives get swapped around. Tag the partitions and it's as easy as a "find" command to figure out the partition you want.

    Try installing three or four Linux distros to their own partitions and then using the standard "find /boot/grub/stage2" command and see how well it helps.
     
  8. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Mark (and MudCrab):

    Finally plucked up the courage to install Grub4DOS and your menu. XP and Vista both boot just fine (relief!), but VistaPE would not boot from the menu.

    I had been questioning in my mind the need for the map commands, so just commented them and then it worked.

    Still to test Memtest, Command, and Reboot but we are finally there.

    A great outcome, and a step change in my understanding of how all this stuff works.

    Bernard
     
  9. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Bernard:

    Terrific! Glad to hear that you have it working, and that you've discovered one of the reasons why I prefer GRUB. Although it is a little (or a lot) geeky, you have absolute control over the boot process. Once understood you can easily make changes by editing a plain-text file. I haven't found anything yet that it can't handle. While there are a lot of boot managers that have prettier interfaces and even can insulate you from the inner workings, they lack the flexibility to handle unusual situations.

    So now if you want to add another OS on your machine just create a partition for it, install it, and add another menu item to your menu.lst file. Note that since you have a boot manager, the need for installing operating systems in primary partitions goes away. You can add any other OS, even Windows, to logical partitions and they can be booted from grub4DOS.

    Have fun with your new setup and I'm glad to have helped. Both of us learned from this.
     
  10. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Mark:

    This new setup is exactly right, and for the first time ATI is behaving in exemplary fashion, but if for any reason I wanted to remove Grub4DOS from the MBR (though I can't atm imagine why I would want to do that), is it simply a case of booting to the Vista RE and running FIXMBR?

    Or do I need to keep the last image I took before installing Grub4DOS so that I could restore the MBR from that?
     
  11. K0LO

    K0LO Registered Member

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    Bernard:

    That's correct; bootrec /FixMbr will work.

    FixMbr will restore the boot code in sector 0 without changing the partition table. A TI MBR/Track 0 restore will do likewise plus it will replace any information in the rest of the sectors (1 through 62) of track 0. Grub4DOS uses sector 0 and sectors 2 - 12, so a TI MBR/Track 0 restore will completely restore grub4DOS if it gets damaged.

    If your last backup image is too large to keep, note that any TI 11 partition image will contain MBR/Track 0, so you could back up the smallest partition on your disk to get a copy of the MBR in the smallest possible file size. Theoretically you could even create a tiny partition and just back that up to make the backup image smaller yet.

    I know, too much information! Returning to the original question -- bootrec /FixMbr will restore the standard Microsoft boot loader and allow your PC to boot directly to the currently-active partition.
     
  12. Earthling

    Earthling Registered Member

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    Not at all. Q. answered, thanks
     
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