Fedora Installation :: Dual Boot Vista - Grub In MBR And HD As Ext4?
Nov 6, 2009
Shrinking the Vista partition and format the rest of the HD as ext4 and install Fedora into that partition and put the GRUB in MBR, is this the right way to dual-boot fedora with Vista?
I am new to Fedora, having used Ubuntu for 2 years. However, I am a little dissappointed in the latest Ubuntu releases and want to try something new. So I installed Fedora 10 on my second hard drive, deleting Ubuntu. On my first hard drive, I have Vista installed. During installation I followed a guide for dual-booting and it said not to install Grub to the MBR of the Windows partition, so I followed that advice...
This caused a Grub error 15 on the next boot. I booted the Fedora installation from the second hard drive. My hypothesis is that the Grub bootloader of Ubuntu was still installed somewhere and it could not find the Ubuntu linux kernel. Therefore, it gave error 15. So I installed Vista again and am hesitant to try Fedora again... How can I install Fedora alongside Vista properly (as dual boot)?
Or should I stay away, because it is apparently too difficult for me? Is it worthwhile to make a separate /home partition as I read that it is preferred to do a clean install every release? Could I just do that with Gparted and then assign the partition as /home in the Anaconda installer? The downside is that I then need to create a swap and / partition too, right?
I did a fresh install of Fedora Core 10 32bit on my Caompaq Presario AMD 64 laptop which originally only had Vista ultimate 64bit. When I go in to grub and choose windows I get a screen that says:
Windows failed to start... File: windowssystem32winload.exe Status: 0xc0000225 Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.
upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04 beta today.Ubuntu boots but not Vista boot info script info for my system as follows...Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #7 for /boot/grub. => No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb
I've got a machine that I'd got 9.10 on, that I've now upgraded to Lucid Lynx - and I'm having the same problem with dual boot (or lack thereof) that I was having previously.
Rough scenario is:
(Original Vista machine had)
C: Windows Vista OS + Windows software, etc.: 500GB - single NTFS partition - SATA drive
D: General dumping ground for data. 500GB SATA drive. Was single NTFS partition, now shrunk to install Ubuntu.
So is now: - NTFS partition (containing general rubbish) - Ubuntu / partition - Ubuntu swap partition
... and then 3 x 1TB SATA drives making up an (Intel ICH9R) FakeRaid RAID5 array - that Windows can happily 'see' and use, but I don't care about Ubuntu having access to it or even seeing it.
Lucid Lynx is installed to /dev/sde6 (IIRC) - but when I boot the machine just boots straight into Vista.
I've done what I can to try and get GRUB correctly installed - to the point that right now I probably have it splattered just about anywhere and everywhere.
So - now - the machine boots and simply presents me with "GRUB Hard Disk Error" and stops...
I can fix this by running the Vista repair, with a fixmbr etc. and putting the MBR back to 'normal' on the first boot disk (/dev/sdd in this case). The machine then just boots straight into Vista.
...or I can boot into Ubuntu (or Vista) by booting off a Super Grub Disk (CD) and selecting "Boot Linux" (or whatever it is) - and it correctly boots Lucid Lynx from /dev/sde6
Ideally I want a proper GRUB dual boot menu - but I just seem to be getting into more and more of a mess!
I have a PC with two 40 Gb hard drives. Vista is currently installed on drive 0. Nothing is installed on drive 1. If I switch cables to the drives, Vista will be installed on drive 1. Nothing will be installed on drive 0. If I then install Fedora 10 on drive 0, will it automatically detect Vista on drive 1 and allow me the option of using Grub or something else to boot it? I want to avoid having Vista overwrite my MBR, but I don't want to piss my wife off because she can't access windows for two weeks while I figure out how to customize Grub or install something else. If I need to customize Grub, (or some other boot loader), I would need step by step instructions. Is there a book or online tutorial?
One of the screens in the installer( middle of screen) will show what systems are on the grub menu, and one will be marked the default.
If the vista is not there (usually indicated by other), then click the add and select the correct boot partition (sda for vista) and change it's label to Windows Vista.
If other is there, click the edit button and change other to Windows Vista.
Finally, click the check box for the one you want to be the default boot. (you can always change that in the grub.conf later.)
I have Windows Vista Home Premium and I don't want to switch entirely to Fedora because I'm not as familiar with it as I am Windows. I mainly wanted to install Fedora for my Linux class at the Community College I attend. How do I install it with a dual boot so it doesn't take over Windows Vista? I had that happen once and it was a mess to fix and reinstall Windows Vista too.
I have been messing around with F13 in VM VirtualBox for awhile now. I have read in some places that it is better to install F13 into its own partition on the hdd creating a dual boot system for, in my case, Vista and F13. Any truth to this? I have been having problems with system settings in F13 while using VB. i.e.: sometimes the system will see 3d support, other times it won't. Sometimes it will see ethernet eth0 and then other times it won't. All my hardware from my MB to Display is supported according to the documentation I have looked at.
I have a single hard-drive on a spare computer and I decided to try out Ubuntu on recommendation from a friend. I really like it now but at first I just dual-booted it, and now I want Vista gone. I know it's unnecessary to have just one OS but my hard-drive isn't particularly big and I'd prefer to have Ubuntu by itself. Can anyone tell me how to eliminate vista and leave Ubuntu as my sole operating system (I've all my files from computer on another computer so I don't have to worry about losing anything).
I had 9.10 installed and I did an upgrade to 10.04. However I cannot see anymore my Windows Vista partition with grub.. I have a Toshiba laptop Satellite p305.This is my boot script output:
Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010
============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================
=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in [code].......
I'm stuck with installing Fedora Core I have 2 hard drives both 80Gb I want to install a fresh copy on one of the drives to do a dual boot I have vista on the main hard drive this is where I am at Installation requires partitioning of your hard drive by default, a partitioning layout is chosen which is reasonable for most users. You can either choose to use this or create your owe. Select the drive to use for this installation?
Usually I have no problems with linux but with fedora it didnt automatically set up the dual boot with vista. I cant remember how to set up grub to boot vista, how to set this up.
I have been trying out different Linux distros to dual boot with Windows Vista. First I tried Ubuntu and it worked fine. Then I tried Fedora 15 and it worked fine as well. Then I went back to Ubuntu but now I have decided to stick with Fedora. The first time I installed Fedora it gave me options for choosing default OS and other things, now I can't remember how I did that and can't figure out how to do that agian. How do I do that agian? I want it to automatically boot into Windows Vista. I am installing Fedora on a seperate hard drive.
Partition limit is 4 on my Inspiron 1525 so even with the space available I cannot create a Fedora partition because:
50MB for Dell Diagnostics **GB main vista partition 10GB recovery partition 2.5GB MediaDirect partition
I'm trying to dual boot vista/fedora. I know I can delete the MediaDirect partition but that causes boot problems if the button is pressed while the power is off. I'm not sure which of the 3 Dell Partitions to remove.
Here the other day, I decided to try out 10.04 Alpha. But after I had done it, I weren't able to boot Vista anymore. When I choose it in the grub boot loader, it changes to only showing the word "GRUB", and nothing more happens. As a desperate attempt to fix it, and because I weren't happy using the Alpha, I then decided to switch back to 9.10, but the problem with booting Vista persists.
I want to set up grub for a dual boot system of xp and vista. The thing is that I have vista installed and would have to install it ance again after setting up XP in order to use the microsoft bootloader. And secondly I slowly want to get into linux...
This is how I tried it: I have four partitions on my HD and want to install the Bootloader on /dev/sda3. I started up the ubuntu live cd, mounted partition3, opened the console and tried this command line which I found in a tutorial
grub-install --root-directory=/media/hda3 --recheck /dev/hda However I get the following error message:
mkdir: cannot create directory '/media/hda3/boot': No such file or directory
I'm new to linux systems and just installed Fedora 14 onto my Windows Vista laptop. I chose the shrink existing system option and then proceeded to install Fedora. The only problem is that when I choose Other in the Grub boot menu my Windows Vista goes straight to the recovery screen and does not boot. I don't want to do a point recovery. Is Vista not running because I shrunk it or because of some configuration that I did not add in the Grub files. How to solve this problem and get Vista running properly from the dual boot menu?
I installed the live CD version of fedora (dual boot with vista) on my laptop. After I connected to the internet the updates downloaded and all went well. however when i restarted at the boot screen I found two instances of fedora such as
Fedora(2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686) Fedora(2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686) Other
The "other" is vista. I am wondering if this is OK or whether I have two fedora. If so i would like to remove one of them to save disk space.
i'm tying to dual boot Vista64 (already installed) and Fedora 10 x86_64. I am running a Dell XPS 410 running 2 sata hard drives raid 0 (ICH8DH). I started the process by shrinking my C drive on disk0 leaving 64.45GB of unallocated space. Next I rebooted into Fedora install DVD and when i get to blue graphical install screen i get message asking if my drive is GPT and if it is it may be corrupted. I click NO, and it comes up with a message telling me i have to initialize my drive if i want to use it ( have to click NO twice) and if i do it i will lose all my data.
i can click no and keep proceding through the install until i get to the partition setup screen. No hard drives or partitions are shown. I've tried googling the problem and get bits of pieces of information scattered in different parts but nothing conclusive to my problem i think. As far as my background of knowledge goes, I'm new to the linux community but give me a thorough guide and i'll do fine (i hope). I've been using fedora on a separate laptop for 2 days now .
I dual booted opensuse along with vista. I installed opensuse in extended partition, with grub and gave the option as "boot from extended partition". Now everything is fine. I am able to boot into suse as well as vista. Now how can I restore my vista bootloader? I want to uninstall openSuse. When I try restore mbr from hard disk. There is absolutely no change!
I'm having trouble getting my computer to dual boot between vista and fedora 10. I 'know' that both are installed, but only 1 will boot at any given time. for instance, i've been using fedora 10 for a few months now, but only this os will boot from the grub menu. to boot vista, i need its install dvd, where I choose the command prompt, and then 'bootrec /fixBoot', 'bootrec /fixMbr'. After this, Vista will boot fine, with all of my data files untouched, but now Vista is the only option that works.
To get back to Fedora, I need its installation dvd, where I go through the motions, and choose to update an installation. Again, now Fedora is the only os that works. I would like to have them both just work, but all I can do is a 'faux' install with the dvd of whichever one I want.
I am an amatuer with linux(fedora 11) and was trying to install it on my laptop which has vista installed on it. I have already allocated 120 GB to the vista partition(NTFS file system) and left 27GB of unpartitioned space on the drive. I tried installing fedora 11 the first time and my vista was absolutely corrupted. I was wondering if someone could guide me with the selections I have to make while partitioning the drive using the fedora installer DVD.
I actually have a Suse running on a partitioned harddisk of 27GB but I prefer Fedore anyway. I would like to install Linus Fedora on my computer to make a dual boot system (Vista and Linus) by overwriting the previous Suse. My question is
Will I be in OS booting trouble (i.e unable to resurect the previous boot screens, windows might possibly be deleted, or not be present in the boot options) if this is done ?
Also, because I have only one disk (the first disk of Fedora 11 downloaded), will it be fine with just one first disk ? (there are several to download but I think I assume I am not going to use all of them during installation, right ?)
i have recently started my masters degree program and i have to install fedora 11 for one of my courses. The problem is when i try to install fedora 11 on my laptop, it wipes out my windows vista installation. I want to keep vista. I have a sony vaio laptop model VGN-FW340D. 4GB RAM and 400 GB HD. i first shrink my hard drive to free up around 100 GB. Then i run fedora 11 DVD and let it make the partitions on my free space.. I have tried everything.. I chose use free space the first time, but i didnt work, it wiped out my vista, next time i chose custom layout and defined boot, root and swap partitions , but again it wiped out my vista.. I have read many guides to dual boot vista and fedora and have carried them out step by step, but nothing works.... Also i dont have vista installation DVD, i just have the recovery CDs, so everytime it wipes out my vista, i have to do system recovery, ive been trying for a week now, and its driving me crazy, i asked a friend of mine to help me out, he has dual boot system, and he tried it and it did the same thing, wiped out my vista... i just have one drive C: with two partitions, one small partitions which contains recovery files, and the rest of the partition has vista.......
I had installed Fedora 13 on an unused partition of my ATA hard-drive yesterday. The primary OS here was Windows Vista.
Anyway, everything was working fne for coupla hours after which I had to restart F13 for some reason. This is when all the trouble began ..
Fedora wouldn't boot cause of some "power issues" - there were none. Windows Vista wouldn't boot because "BootMGR was missing"
I figured if I removed Fedora using the live CD - format the partition, it would help. It didn't. Well, atleast the partition got formatted. I tried re-installing F13 from the live CD but it doesn't finish the process - saying a command, something to do with 'shutdown' is not valid.
I tried repairing Vista from the Installation DVD but it is unable to do so.
Right now, on rebooting the computing, I enter the 'grub' console. I tried using grub commands to boot "Windows" from the (hd0,0) partition like thus,
Code: grub> rootnoverify (hd0,0) grub> makeactive grub> chainloader +1 grub> boot But it still maintains that "BootMGR is missing" .
I just set up a dual boot on a system with fedora 12 and XP. XP in on one hard drive (sda) and Fedora on a second hard drive (sdb).
I installed grub on the Fedora disk so as to not touch the windows disk at all.
Prior to installation, in the bios, I set the Fedora disk (sdb) first in the boot sequence, and then XP (sda) so that the grub loader would boot up by default. (If I set the windows drive first then the system bypasses grub and loads straight into windows.)
My system can now boot up into Fedora fine, but if I select windows from the grub loader menu I just get a blinking cursor - windows will not boot.What do I have to do so that grub can boot into XP?
Have just installed 9.10, again, many failed attempts previously.Cannot get to boot up and show menu on dual boot with Vista initially,However when I delete the grubenv file the system boots ok and works fine.But does not show the grub menu to choose boot up choices.Got the information to delete the file on some posts elsewhere about booting problem, and tried a longshot and got into Ubuntu for the first time from trying to install now for 3 months!The problem is the file grubenv is created each time so on subsequent boot ups the sytem fails to boot again.The Grub version is 1.97 beta 4, most up to date for Karmic I think, I have seen a version 1.98 but dont think its for Karmic?
Is there a way to modify the grub.cfg file to stop this problem ( all posts say dont touch this file??Or install a script to delete the grubenv file on shutdown as a workaround for me, (I have no idea how to do this whatsoever, I'm not familiar with linux at all)I did read that this problem was fixed/patched in Grub version 2, but dosn't seem.so on my system afetr I updated it when I got into Ubuntu.I couldnt find the patch or fix, I got the information I am on about from this post:URL...It seems to say it was fixed or patched by Colin Watson reading through, but I don't really understand whats being said or how to get the patch on my system if indeed there is one?Sorry for being a bit thick about all this, its a bit beyond my brain now, hope somebody can help out as I have enjoyed my brief bit of fun in Ubuntu.
I have just installed Ubuntu 10.4 x64 onto a machine with Vista Ultimate x64. When I boot the machine, the Windows option comes up in the GRUB menu. However, when I attempt to boot Windows, I receive the following error: No such device: de80ab9f80ab7d21. error: No such partition. Press any key to continue...
I looked around and found a similar issue at [URL] However, before trying to fix the issue by guesswork or via solutions that worked for a similar, though not necessarily identical problem. I've run the boot info script (see output below) mentioned several places on this site as a valuable input for boot problem tracking. how to get Windows to boot on my computer?
I have win 7 and F13 installed on my computer but I am having trouble setting up dual boot so I can choose to boot F13 or win 7. I have tried to set up grub, how to install grub and set up a dual boot so I can use F13.