27 January 2007
Vista and Linux Dual Boot
Desktop Linux's writer Steven Vaughan-Nichols has written about his experience installing both Vista and Linux on one computer.
Apparently dual booting Vista and Linux is not so easy. Vista has a new bootloader ,BCD (Boot Configuration Data), which is independent of the firmware. Also the editor for the boot option, BCDEdit.exe is more hostile for the user than friendly not only for dual booting, but also just for standard editing of the boot options.
A side warning coming from him warns that unless you have a lot of time and don't mind some issues with incompatibility and know exactly what you are doing, upgrading to Vista from a previous version of Windows is not the best option.
After installing Vista on one partition and Linux on the other partition of the hard drive, one problem arises, The system will only boot to Linux as a result of Vista's BCD. The solution, is to add some lines to the bootloader settings (/boot/grub/menu.lst) in Linux.
Adding:
title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1) -or whereever the partition that holds Vista is
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
The format of the "hd0,1" section above is that the first hard drive is hd0, the second hd1 and so on. In relation to partitions, which is the number after the comma, the first partition is 0 while the second is 1.
After restarting the system, you should see an option screen to boot to either Linux or Vista.
Apparently dual booting Vista and Linux is not so easy. Vista has a new bootloader ,BCD (Boot Configuration Data), which is independent of the firmware. Also the editor for the boot option, BCDEdit.exe is more hostile for the user than friendly not only for dual booting, but also just for standard editing of the boot options.
A side warning coming from him warns that unless you have a lot of time and don't mind some issues with incompatibility and know exactly what you are doing, upgrading to Vista from a previous version of Windows is not the best option.
After installing Vista on one partition and Linux on the other partition of the hard drive, one problem arises, The system will only boot to Linux as a result of Vista's BCD. The solution, is to add some lines to the bootloader settings (/boot/grub/menu.lst) in Linux.
Adding:
title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,1) -or whereever the partition that holds Vista is
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1
The format of the "hd0,1" section above is that the first hard drive is hd0, the second hd1 and so on. In relation to partitions, which is the number after the comma, the first partition is 0 while the second is 1.
After restarting the system, you should see an option screen to boot to either Linux or Vista.
Labels: linux, microsoft, os, vista, windows
