Re: GRUB ... extended partition ... Windows XP
Glenn Becker wrote:
Hi All -
I will try to make this short, but it feels like an epic at this point. :)
I'm trying to create a 6-OS laptop (80gig hard drive on a Dell Inspiron
4100): WinXP, Debian and Slackware Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris 10
x86.
My first try was with a primary partition for Windows and an extended
partition w/ 5 logicals for the rest. The short version of what I
This has some hope of working.
encountered: GRUB did great autodetecting and booting WinXP, Debian and
Slackware. Once I installed NetBSD, however, I found that the NetBSD
bootloader did fine with WinXP and NetBSD but could not seem to boot
either Linux system.
You probably need to ask on a BSD list. If BSD is bootable by the
WinXP boot manager, that's the way I would go, because the WinXP
boot manager can also boot GRUB. That way you would only have to
deal with getting other things working with the WinXP boot manager.
I doubt much work has been done trying to make the BSD boot manager
usable with GRUB and vice versa. I suspect that some effort has been
put in to make BSD and WinXP work together.
Went back and forth with that a couple of times, then tried recasting
the disk to an extended partition for WinXP, Debian and Slack (and swap
space), then primary partitions for NetBSD, FreeBSD and Solaris;
however, I didn't get far because this time around GRUB autodetected
WinXP, Debian and Slackware fine, but will not boot Windows. What I get
when I try is this:
Booting Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,4)
filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
savedefault
makeactive
Error 12: Invalid device requested
WinXP wants to be on a primary partition.
... which is sort of confusing to me. Unless I am mistaken, '0x7' /is/
the correct filesystem type. Plus, GRUB recognized the partition
correctly upon installation. So I'm not sure what direction to take,
though I've found a lot of various hints across the 'Net.
The one oddity I am dealing with now is that somehow, after converting
the Windows partition to extended/logical, I wound up with a small drib
of a partition - 8mb - at the beginning of the disk ... which I never
intended to create. Tried to boot Partition Magic and get rid of it, but
failed. So I don't know whether that little partition-ette is causing
problems, or whether Windows XP just doesn't like being on a logical
partition ...
Yes. Also, WinXP has a "recovery partition" it creates. This may be
what you're seeing.
Mike.
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