Re: [gentoo-user] Dual booting Dell with Windows 7

[Mick]

On 1 March 2010 18:09, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
> On 1 March 2010 15:04, Peter Ruskin <peter.ruskin@×××××××××.com> wrote:

>> Thanks for the howto, Mick.  I followed it on my Windows Vista Home
>> Premium 64; got "The operation completed successfully" all the way
>> through, but on reboot I don't get a boot menu.
>
> Can you please post your partition table (cfdisk, or parted will do),
> let me know which is your Gentoo /boot partition if it is not obvious
> and the drive letters as understood by Vista when it is running.  A
> screenshot of gparted will help (email off list to keep the bandwidth
> down) because it also shows the Labels.

OK, from your partition scheme (received off list) I can see that
Vista is the first primary partition and your installation does not
have a separate boot partition for bootmgr.exe and BCD.  This makes
things easier for multibooting and upgrading to Win7.

>> This doesn't matter much to me at the moment, as I use Acronis OSS
>> Selector for boot manager, but this doesn't work on Windows 7, so
>> my free update to Windows 7 is gathering dust.
>
> As long as the upgrade to Windows 7 does not mess up the MS boot
> partition then achieving this in Vista will be a good dry run for when
> you install Windows 7.  However, I am not sure that you will be able
> to achieve this test run while Acronis is managing your boot session.
> My method implies that you use the native MSWindows boot manager.

I'ved had a quick look at the Acronis OSS product.  There is one thing
worse than the MSWindows boot managers and that is other proprietary
boot managers which follow the Microsoft design philosophy!  Ha, ha!
:-)  Unfortunately, Acronis OSS is rather intrusive in how it manages
the boot process.  It moves all Vista boot files into a separate
folder and then it takes over the boot process with its own
(undocumented?) mechanisms.  Also, it does the same with other OS'
boot partitions (i.e. writes files in their partitions and moves
things around).

If you wish to move on from Vista to Win7, or want to first try out my
suggested boot method, then I suspect that the safest approach would
be to first uninstall the Acronis OSS.  Hopefully, it will
sympathetically restore the original Vista boot files and MBR and get
itself out of the way.  If not, which is what I suspect will happen,
then you may end up with an unbootable Vista.  Either way, I wouldn't
worry about your Linux system because it will be easily made bootable
again by installing GRUB in the MBR with a Live CD.

I can see the following options open to you:

1.  Repair Vista:

Essentially you want to restore Vista to its original condition as it
was before you installed Acronis OSS.  Follow the Acronis instructions
and uninstall Acronis, then boot into Vista.  If Acronis uninstalls
cleanly and restore the MBR you should be able to boot into Vista and
follow my instructions for setting up multibooting.  If the Acronis
instructions ask you to use a Vista CD and run Startup Repair then it
means that it will probably need to reinstall the Vista bootloader
code (IPL) in the MBR and I suspect it may also rebuild its BCD file.
If not and Vista does not boot, then you need to use your Vista CD to
auto-repair your Vista boot system as detailed here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927391

or use bootrec.exe as described here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392

or if you know what you need to do, run bootrec.exe /fixmbr,
bootrec.exe /fixboot and finally BCDedit.exe to do it manually.

Then follow my instructions and you should be able to multiboot fine.
BTW, because your Vista partition is both your MSWindows boot and
system partition, your do not need to redefine the boot device with a
drive letter C: as in my last step.  Just define it once only as per:

bcdedit /set {fda5ebf7-119b-11df-969c-f924691e8117} device boot

and thereafter Vista bootmgr.exe should know where to look into to
find boot.lnx, i.e. in your first NTFS partition.

2.  Upgrade straight to Win7:

If you ask it to do a clean installation in your first partition
(rather than back up all Vista files to allow you to downgrade to
Vista later should you wish to) then it will format the Vista
partition, blow away everything including the Acronis boot code from
the MBR and install Win7.  If Win7 asks you to create a separate boot
partition, then you say No (because you haven't any spare partitions
and it may decide to wipe one of your Linux partitions and use that
instead!)  When it completes installing Win7 in your first primary
partition you boot into it and follow my instructions with the bcdedit
command.

3.  If you are not worried about warranty claims and what not, then
you can install GRUB in the MBR and chainload Vista or Win7 from it,
after you repair Vista or install Win7.

BTW, disabling/deactivating Acronis OSS won't work, because Vista
requires to access the original MBR code with partition IDs to know
which partition to jump to.  I am not entirely sure what deactivating
the Acronis OSS does, because it is still running from the MBR and it
may or may not be able to interpret the BCD partition IDs.  Hope this
helps.
-- 
Regards,
Mick