[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Booting Linux from windows 2000



On 09 Nov 2002 02:39:33 -0500, Scott Henson
<shenson2@silvercoin.dyndns.org> wrote:
>On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 14:18, Pigeon wrote:
>> It is true that Windoze doesn't like changes to the MBR. To hack the
>> Win98 MBR I had to include code to put the original MBR back after the
>> hack had done its work, then make Windoze reinstall the hacked version
>> after it had done its check. That relied on having DOS available
>> underneath and probably would be much harder in 2k. It's not something
>> I would really recommend!
>
>No, Windows 95/98/ME all do just fine without the MBR. You can have lilo
>or grub steal it and windows wont even figure it out.  Now Windows
>NT/2000/XP all need the MBR and wont boot without it.  Under these you
>have to use the windows boot loader to load grub or lilo then they
>continue to boot linux.  Best way is probably to make a grub boot floppy
>though.

I am not sure Windows NT/2k/XP cares about the MBR, the 'real' bootloader 
they use is supposed to be at the beginning of the partition they're 
installed to. I used Grub (Best Bootloader Forever) on many different systems 
all booting multiple OS's. I always set it up in the MBR (duh) and edit my 
menu.lst in /boot/grub accordingly to the disks/partition/OS's I have. Then 
stage1 (in the MBR) looks for its beloved stage2  (sometimes stage1.5) and 
boots whatever is in menu.lst. If you pick Windows to start with, Grub just 
gives control to the Windows bootloader.  The thing is You'd better install 
all Win systems before installing Linux so that all Windows systems share one 
windows bootloader containing only Windows entries, and then put only one 
entry in Grub to give you access to the Windows bootloader. At least that's 
how I do it, do not hesitate to ask if I am not clear.  

-- 
byeBye...
François Le Lay 

Yet Another Art Project aka YAAP > http://www.yaap.org
----



Reply to: