[ILUG] Wandering partition bootable flag

[Gavin Beatty]

On 04/09/07, ollie at eillo.org <ollie at eillo.org> wrote:
> 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.

I had the exact same problem, didn't want to install to MBR*. Not a
Dell laptop and it's not a Dell problem. Though their partition
strangeness may complicate things further.

I'd really recommend what Michael Watterson said about using dd and
editing boot.ini. There's a util called [1]bootpart that can do all of
this for you. There is NO MENTION of compatibility with Vista so ymmv.
In fact, I wouldn't trust it if I was you and I'd just learn how to dd
my linux bootsector.

  [1] http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

It's really not an inconvenience at all. Just point the windows
bootloader at your linux partition that has grub on it. No need to add
every linux option to boot.ini - just the one.

Cheers,
Gavin


*Because my laptop has a nice, installed when shipped, linux DVD/media
player that boots from MBR.
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