Problems with dual boot and grub

[Jeff Vian]

Marc Schwartz wrote:

>On Sun, 2004-03-21 at 19:56, Kenneth Becker wrote:
>  
>
>>Marc Schwartz Wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>>>by following the instructions here:
>>>
>>>http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>>      
>>>
>>Mark:
>>You da man. Worked the first time, no problems. So: We use the NT 
>>bootloader to start up Linux! Seems that we need something besides the 
>>basic Grub manual if Grub's going to do the heavy lifting itself.
>>
>>Ken Becker
>>    
>>
>
>
>Ken,
>
>I'm happy that it worked for you.  :-)
>
>Understand that my own use of this particular approach is that I do not
>want to overwrite the MBR. I need to essentially preserve the Windows
>partition in as transparent a process as possible, since I lease my HW
>and need to send it back to Dell when the lease expires.
>
>Thus, I want to be able to both install and remove Linux as easily as
>possible, without having to reinstall Windows and the associated
>applications.
>  
>
This problem with the MBR is easily handled with one of 2 ways.

1.  boot to a dos/windows floppy and use "fdisk /mbr".  This will 
rewrite the mbr and return it to the raw form that dos/windows (among 
other OSes) like for booting directly from the active partition.

2.  before putting the linux boot loader on the mbr, save it with "dd 
if=/dev/<boot drive> of=MBR.saved bs=512 count=1" to create the image as 
it was befre installing, then when ready to restore it back use dd again 
to replace the original copy.

>By using this approach, when time comes to send the HW back, I can
>simply wipe Linux and resize the Windows NTFS partition back to its
>original configuration using Partition Magic.
>
>If I only had Linux on the system or I was willing to put GRUB on the
>MBR, this approach would not be required. Then I would use GRUB to boot
>Linux and/or the Windows partition as per typical procedures.
>
>I found the above tutorial when I installed RH 8.0 on my older Dell
>i8200 a couple of years back when dual-booting with XP at that time and
>kept it around for RH 9 and now FC1 on my i5150. It is a pretty
>straight-forward process. As I mentioned in a prior post, the key is to
>remember that you need to recreate the boot sector file and copy it to
>Windows if you should re-partition and/or resize any partitions on your
>system.
>
>I should also note that I do need to "force LBA" on both of my systems,
>given where the Linux partition starts (ie. > cylinder 1024). Failing
>this, I did have trouble booting.
>
>  
>
I use your method myself in some cases, but still prefer to use grub on 
the MBR.