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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Shivan Hunter on June 18, 2010, 06:43:30 pm

Title: Win Se7en bootloader issue
Post by: Shivan Hunter on June 18, 2010, 06:43:30 pm
Well I can't call something crap without empirical evidence that it's crap, so I installed win7 on my new 640GB HDD. Thing is, I want to be able to boot into my old XP partition as well. Thing is, I have two XP partitions at the moment and 7 will only boot into one of them.

1ST HDD (160 GB)
sda1 - old XP partition, boots properly and has all my crap on it, I want to move this so Linux can use the whole drive
sda5 - Kubuntu 10.04
(there's also a swap area)

2ND HDD (640 GB)
sdb1 - win7
sdb2 - XP (new one, 7 won't boot to this one, created by doing a "cp /media/disk/* /media/disk-2/" from the Linux partition
sdb3 - 400GB left for storage, NTFS, no OS

so... even if I point GRUB at the new XP partition, win7 boots with an option 'previous version of windows' which points to the old XP partition. How to I point either GRUB or 7 to the new XP?
Title: Re: Win Se7en bootloader issue
Post by: pecenipicek on June 18, 2010, 07:17:34 pm
point the ****er towards sdb2 itself.


syntax is something like

Code: [Select]
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

you have to figure out the (hdx,x) crap out yourself


also, i have doubts about sdb2 being bootable at all, i'd figure you'd need a repair "install" on that partition in particular, since just doing the cp command wont copy the low-level crap like MBR.
Title: Re: Win Se7en bootloader issue
Post by: Shivan Hunter on June 18, 2010, 07:28:40 pm
point the ****er towards sdb2 itself.
so... even if I point GRUB at the new XP partition, win7 boots with an option 'previous version of windows' which points to the old XP partition.
Tried to edit the 7 bootloader to point to the correct XP partition. Will screw around with it more.

Quote
also, i have doubts about sdb2 being bootable at all, i'd figure you'd need a repair "install" on that partition in particular, since just doing the cp command wont copy the low-level crap like MBR.
I figured something like that might happen. I'd try a repair install if it would even try to boot that partition- but se7en just seems to try booting the old XP that I want to get rid of.

Meh. My XP disc is back at my mom's place where I won't be until after the weekend. Anything else I might try?
Title: Re: Win Se7en bootloader issue
Post by: pecenipicek on June 18, 2010, 08:44:55 pm
well, my main idea for fixing that up would be to make each partition bootable, and then first running 7's bootloader repair, on its partition, then on both xp's, then pointing grub to each one. thats the best i've got on it. Not sure if its feasible tho, unless you go with partition hiding shenanigans.


My advice? Read up the grub manual for ideas, its really well written, but you have to understand the subject matter behind it a bit more than the typical win/lin user might...


Since you've got a few days to burn till you get the xp disc back, you have time to mess around with it :D




Also, advice? If you have a printer, print out anything you might find useful before actually doing anything.
Title: Re: Win Se7en bootloader issue
Post by: BloodEagle on June 18, 2010, 09:25:49 pm
Have you tried reassigning your second HDD as your first?