Dual boot issue with Windows vista and RHEL 4

pkaushish · 03-02-2007, 10:08 PM

I have gone through the forum and installed the required rpm but still i am not able to boot vista

this is what i have done with no luck

Please Help
Thanks and regards
Prahant Kaushish

Code:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE:  You do not have a /boot partition.  This means that
#          all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
#          root (hd0,0)
#          kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb1
#          initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb
default=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (2.6.9-5.ELsmp)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-5.ELsmp.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS-up (2.6.9-5.EL)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
	initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img
title Windows Vista
	rootnoverify (hd0,4)
	chainloader +1


=================================================================
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS release 4 (Nahant)

[root@localhost ~]# uname -r
2.6.9-5.ELsmp

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -q --queryformat "%{ARCH}n" kernel-smp
i686n[root@localhost ~]#
=================================================================

i installed 
kernel-module-ntfs-2.6.9-5.EL-2.1.20-0.rr.4.10.i686.rpm
and
kernel-module-ntfs-2.6.9-5.ELsmp-2.1.20-0.rr.4.10.i686.rpm


[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/modprobe ntfs
[root@localhost ~]# cat /proc/filesystems
nodev   sysfs
nodev   rootfs
nodev   bdev
nodev   proc
nodev   sockfs
nodev   binfmt_misc
nodev   usbfs
nodev   usbdevfs
nodev   futexfs
nodev   tmpfs
nodev   pipefs
nodev   eventpollfs
nodev   devpts
        ext2
nodev   ramfs
nodev   hugetlbfs
        iso9660
nodev   mqueue
nodev   selinuxfs
        ext3
nodev   rpc_pipefs
nodev   autofs
        ntfs
[root@localhost ~]#

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1        1661    13341951   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2            1662        1916     2048287+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hdb3            1917        9729    62757922+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5            1917        4466    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6            4467        5741    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb7            5742        7016    10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb8            7017        8291    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb9            8292        9729    11550703+   7  HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]#



[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/hdb5 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -r
[root@localhost ~]#

TylerD75 · 03-03-2007, 04:15 AM

Try this instead (in grub.conf):

Code:

title=Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1

This should do the trick, if the hd0,4 is the right partition.

pkaushish · 03-03-2007, 01:57 PM

tried that , no luck get error

Quote:

error 12 : invalid device requested

TylerD75 · 03-03-2007, 03:18 PM

If hdb5 is your windows xp partition (as stated in your last line of the original post) you should use hd0,3, not hd0,4.

Code:

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1 (hd0,0)  *           1        1661    13341951   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2 (hd0,1)           1662        1916     2048287+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hdb3 (hd0,2)           1917        9729    62757922+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5 (hd0,3)           1917        4466    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb6 (hd0,4)           4467        5741    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb7 (hd0,5)           5742        7016    10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb8 (hd0,6)           7017        8291    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb9 (hd0,7)           8292        9729    11550703+   7  HPFS/NTFS

pkaushish · 03-03-2007, 06:59 PM

Thanks for the responce but still getting the same error

Quote:

title=Windows Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,3)
makeactive

error 12 : invalid device requested

I am desperate now nothing seems to work.
This might be helpful:
I am also using a 160 gb SATA drive with a totaly different installtion of XP
I select form BIOS boot menu from which one to boot.

TylerD75 · 03-03-2007, 11:16 PM

Now I'm confused. Are you telling me that your XP installation is located on a different HD?
Or do you have two installations of XP on the same computer?

Can you do a "fdisk -l" and post the result here?
I need to know how many physical harddrives are present, and how many partitions are on each HD?

And tell me how big the partition with XP on is (not the harddrive, but the partition)?

TylerD75 · 03-04-2007, 03:19 AM

Damn! I totally overlooked the fact that you're trying to dualboot VISTA, not XP.
I'm not using VISTA my self, so I'm not really the best person to ask...

But you can check out this site: www.pro-networks.org/forum/about78184.html

It looks as if the procedure is the same, unless you resized a VISTA partition when installing linux.
Just remember to use sd0,0 instead of hd0,0 when VISTA/XP is running on a SATA disc.

pkaushish · 03-04-2007, 03:09 PM

Hi, I have gone to that link, but no go.........
I am not able to understand whats the problem.
Things have been working for so many people, but I don't understand whats the problem with my installation.

Hey Thanks for responce, let me know if i can do anything else

TylerD75 · 03-05-2007, 01:29 AM

1. What kind of partition is VISTA installed on?
Is it a volume, virtual-drive (as mentioned in the article I linked before) or a normal NTFS partition?

2. Also, do you have XP AND VISTA installed on the same computer?
3. If so, in what order did you install them?
Was it XP, VISTA and then Linux? This should help pinpoint what boot loader you're using (for XP/Vista).

4. Also post the result of "fdisk -l" and mark what partitions each OS is installed on.

5. Do you have any kind of RAID setup?

I could also mention that the NTFS modules are irrelevant for anything but reading NTFS partitions. So if you're trying to access the VISTA partition from Linux, you should know you'll only get read access (unless you formated the Vista partition during install, then I'm not sure if you can access it at all. Vista uses a new version of NTFS, so I'm not sure if linux supports that yet).

To get both read and write access to the XP version of NTFS, you should use ntfs-3g (google it).
Before actually accessing a NTFS partition, I suggest you disable the System-Restore service in XP though. Or you might get a scan-disc msg everytime you boot XP.

pkaushish · 03-06-2007, 05:54 AM

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1        1661    13341951   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2            1662        1916     2048287+  82  Linux swap
/dev/hdb3            1917        9729    62757922+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5            1917        4466    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS(vista) 
/dev/hdb6            4467        5741    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb7            5742        7016    10241406    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb8            7017        8291    10241406    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/hdb9            8292        9729    11550703+   7  HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]#

-->/dev/hdb1 Linux (10 gb)
-->/dev/hdb2 Linux Swap (2 gb)
-->Vista is installed on /dev/hdb5 (20 gb normal NTFS partition)

--> XP is not installed on the same disk
I have 2 hard drive
1) 80 GB PATA with Linux and Vista
2) 160 GB SATA with XP only

XP does not know about Linux or Vista and Vice versa. During the installtion of vista and linux I disconnected the XP hard drive, so that if I get into some trouble I still have a running pc.

--> I don't have any kind of RAID setup

pkaushish · 03-06-2007, 05:57 AM

I also tried this

Quote:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

Error 13: Invalid or unsupportted executable format

press any key to continue..........

riyu · 03-06-2007, 06:37 AM

did you try rootnoverify (hd0,2) ?

TylerD75 · 03-06-2007, 09:06 AM

It just hit me that your trying to boot Vista off an extended partition!
Maybe Vista doesn't like booting from those?
If that's not the problem, then I'm not sure what might help you.

With a quick Google, I came up with a LOT of problems with the Vista bootloader and Linux, but most of the solutions have been covered here. The only difference from your setup seem to be that they all install Vista to a Primary Partition. So all I can suggest is to reinstall Vista to either a new HD, or at least a primary partition on your current hd.
This is not a simple solution, but it's all I can come up with.

Hopefully someone in here can confirm if Vista has a problem booting off an extended partition?

Erik_FL · 03-08-2007, 11:05 PM

When you install Vista, it writes a disk serial number in the Master Boot Record (MBR). That's the first sector of the hard disk that contains the partition table. When you install anything else like GRUB or LILO to the MBR that will write over the disk serial number (with zeroes) and then Vista will not boot. You can repair the Vista MBR but then you won't be able to boot GRUB or LILO.

Microsoft made that change to the Vista bootloader at some point and not all of the earlier (beta / release candidate) versions care if you change the MBR. The officially released version of Vista does care about changes to the MBR. The Vista boot loader generates some kind of UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) based on the disk serial number and uses that to verify if it can access the boot volume. Windows XP doesn't check the disk serial number when it boots, and later will write some kind of disk serial number back in the MBR (probably saying that it detected a new disk volume).

There are a couple of ways to solve the problem. One way is to install GRUB or LILO to the Linux partition boot sector instead of the MBR. Then you have to make a copy of the Linux partition boot sector into a file using "dd". Copy the boot sector file to Vista, and then add a Vista boot manager entry using the "bcedit" command in Vista.

This web site has an explanation of the problem and how to create a Vista boot manager option to boot Linux.
http://www.thorsten-lux.de/files/wiki.html

Here are the commands that you use to create a boot entry from a Vista command prompt.

Code:

bcdedit /create /d "Linux" /application BOOTSECTOR 
bcdedit /set {ID} device boot
bcdedit /set {ID} PATH \bootsect.lnx 
bcdedit /displayorder {ID} /addlast
bcdedit /timeout 5

NOTE:
ID is a very long number (UUID) that you get after using the first command.
The file "bootsect.lnx" can have any name providing that it contains a copy of the Linux partition boot sector (that loads GRUB).
You should be able to use "/addfirst" instead of "/addlast" if you want Linux to appear in the boot menu before Vista.

If you're familiar with creating a bootsector file to add Linux into the Windows XP boot menu, you create the "bootsect.lnx" file for Vista in exactly the same way. Use a "dd" command similar to this in Linux.

Code:

dd if=/dev/hda2 of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

How you copy the "bootsect.lnx" file to the Vista NTFS root directory is up to you. You can use an MS-DOS floppy, a FAT32 partition, or a version of Linux with NTFS write support.

If you don't mind dumping and editing disk sectors you can also do this.

Install or repair Vista so that it boots.
Dump out the Vista MBR and note the disk serial number bytes at offset 0x1B8. The disk serial number is four bytes (0x1B8 through 0x1BB) stored in Little-Endian order.
Install GRUB or LILO to the MBR (I recommend GRUB).
Patch the MBR written by GRUB or LILO to have the correct disk serial number bytes.
NOTE: Neither GRUB nor LILO has any code or other needed information in those bytes.

The reason that I recommend using GRUB is so that you will only need to do this once. If you use LILO you will have to do this every time you change the LILO boot menu and run the "lilo" command.