[ILUG] Wandering partition bootable flag

[Michael Watterson]

Or use dd to save the Linux boot sector as a file on the NT partition as 
say bootlin.par
add a line in Boot.ini

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP 
Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
C:\bootlin.par="My favorite Linux Distro"


You can extend this to any number of OS, even creating bootrecords on 
normally unbootable MBR of logical drives in a physical partition, Or 
even different versions of linux installed on same partition (save 
partition record as a file between each extra install).


Also works for OS2, MSDOS, Win9x etc.

maybe someone can explain to me why it works for any arbitary logical drive?

I've an online article I did for Dell in 1999 when they were doing RH6.0 
shipping. I've forgotten where.

Belgarath wrote:
> install grub in Master Boot Record ?
>
> On Tuesday 04 September 2007 10:37:51 ollie at eillo.org wrote:
>   
>> Hello everyone,
>>                          I have a couple of questions about Vista and dual
>> booting. I installed Arch Linux alongside Vista on my new Dell Vostro
>> laptop. Everything went fine; Vista can be started from grub.
>>
>> However every time I restart the laptop the bootable flag seems to have
>> wandered from the GRUB partition back to the Vista partition?!?
>>
>> If I wan to boot Linux again I have to stick in a rescue disk, start
>> fdisk and set the GRUB partition as bootable again.
>>
>>
>> Has anyone come across this? Is there a fix?
>>
>> I know I can boot through the windows bootloader but I prefer to go
>> straight to GRUB.
>>
>>
>> Also slightly OT -
>> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial133.html describes a
>> handy way to shrink the NTFS partition to make room for Linux. Originally
>> Vista had all 160 GB. The above method allowed me to shrink that to about
>> 100 GB but refuses to allow me to shrink it any more.
>>
>> I’m using about 25 GB of the space available; I have disabled the page
>> file, emptied the recycle bin, run that clean up program and defragmented
>> the partition.
>>
>> Any suggestions?
>>
>> Regards,
>>         Oliver.
>>     
>
>   


-- 
Mike