[ILUG] Wandering partition bootable flag

[Michael Watterson]

ollie at eillo.org wrote:
> Cheers, ill try both ways. If i understand correctly the 
> Vista bootloader is completely different to the XP/NT one
> so itl be interesting to find out anyway.
>
> I wiped everything again yesterday and installed linux leaving
> space at the begining for windows so at least i have my 
> priorities right now :)
>
>   
Actually Vista is the same really as XP, they just have more broken bits 
glued on .
Beta version XP used boot.ini

I hadn't realised till now they had "hidden" boot.ini. I think you have 
to enable "legacy" in the bcdedit tool for the old boot.ini system to work


I haven't done this, but the NT4.0 etc instructions on dd of 512 bytes 
saved as a file should work then
study bcdedit

http://www.pro-networks.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=79102 has a discussion 
of this.



> Cheers,
>        Oliver.
>
> On Wed, 5 Sep 2007 15:11:22 +0100, "Gavin Beatty" <gavinbeatty at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> 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.
>>
>>     
>
>   


-- 
Mike