Dual booting Fedora and Win7

[Bill Davidsen]

I'm putting Win7 on a machine for testing on a project, on bare iron instead of
a VM. Since I hate to waste a machine for 60-90 minutes a week of test, I want
to mix with Fedora. I asked a month or so ago, and got some thoughts about
adding Win7 to an existing Fedora machine, from people who hadn't done it (Win7
wasn't out yet).

After a slew of install issues, a clean install was done and the Win7 worked.
Now to boot Fedora using the "Windows boot manager." No, that doesn't work,
checked that the grub-install had been in the OS partition rather than the MBR,
still no boot.

Reinstall Fedora, still doesn't boot from WBM.

Run grub-install into MBR, boot into Fedora, add chain load to grub.conf,
reboot. Win7 is in the boot menu, but say "unknown executable" instead of
booting. Reinstall Win7 again, run project required tests.

Hopefully at some time will be able to put Win7 in grub menu.

--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@...>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot

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[Jussi Lehtola-2]

On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 18:41 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:

> I'm putting Win7 on a machine for testing on a project, on bare iron instead of
> a VM. Since I hate to waste a machine for 60-90 minutes a week of test, I want
> to mix with Fedora. I asked a month or so ago, and got some thoughts about
> adding Win7 to an existing Fedora machine, from people who hadn't done it (Win7
> wasn't out yet).
>
> After a slew of install issues, a clean install was done and the Win7 worked.
> Now to boot Fedora using the "Windows boot manager." No, that doesn't work,
> checked that the grub-install had been in the OS partition rather than the MBR,
> still no boot.
>
> Reinstall Fedora, still doesn't boot from WBM.
>
> Run grub-install into MBR, boot into Fedora, add chain load to grub.conf,
> reboot. Win7 is in the boot menu, but say "unknown executable" instead of
> booting. Reinstall Win7 again, run project required tests.
>
> Hopefully at some time will be able to put Win7 in grub menu.

I had no trouble getting Win7 booted with grub, it worked as with every
other Windows I have dealt with.

Note, however, that at least in my case fdisk reports
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1          13      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2              13       10449    83824640    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3   *       10449       10475      204800   83  Linux
(+ an extended partition which contains /, /home and swap)


These were created by the Windows install upon partitioning. I only gave
some 80GB of disk for Windows and it created two partitions: /dev/sda1
(the Windows boot partition) and /dev/sda2 (the Windows system
partition). My grub.conf states

title Windows 7
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        chainloader +1

so you need to use the Windows boot partition, not the Windows system
partition for the chailoader to work. My grub is (naturally) in the MBR.
--
Jussi Lehtola
Fedora Project Contributor
jussilehtola@...

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[Bill Davidsen]

Jussi Lehtola wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-11-03 at 18:41 -0500, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>> I'm putting Win7 on a machine for testing on a project, on bare iron instead of
>> a VM. Since I hate to waste a machine for 60-90 minutes a week of test, I want
>> to mix with Fedora. I asked a month or so ago, and got some thoughts about
>> adding Win7 to an existing Fedora machine, from people who hadn't done it (Win7
>> wasn't out yet).
>>
>> After a slew of install issues, a clean install was done and the Win7 worked.
>> Now to boot Fedora using the "Windows boot manager." No, that doesn't work,
>> checked that the grub-install had been in the OS partition rather than the MBR,
>> still no boot.
>>
>> Reinstall Fedora, still doesn't boot from WBM.
>>
>> Run grub-install into MBR, boot into Fedora, add chain load to grub.conf,
>> reboot. Win7 is in the boot menu, but say "unknown executable" instead of
>> booting. Reinstall Win7 again, run project required tests.
>>
>> Hopefully at some time will be able to put Win7 in grub menu.
>
> I had no trouble getting Win7 booted with grub, it worked as with every
> other Windows I have dealt with.
>
> Note, however, that at least in my case fdisk reports
>    Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1               1          13      102400    7  HPFS/NTFS
> Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
> /dev/sda2              13       10449    83824640    7  HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda3   *       10449       10475      204800   83  Linux
> (+ an extended partition which contains /, /home and swap)
>
>
> These were created by the Windows install upon partitioning. I only gave
> some 80GB of disk for Windows and it created two partitions: /dev/sda1
> (the Windows boot partition) and /dev/sda2 (the Windows system
> partition). My grub.conf states
>
> title Windows 7
> rootnoverify (hd0,0)
> chainloader +1
>
> so you need to use the Windows boot partition, not the Windows system
> partition for the chailoader to work. My grub is (naturally) in the MBR.

Not what I saw, see attached fdisk output, I only got one partition. However,
that gives me something to consider, at least. Thanks.


--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen@...>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot


Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001e50e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1         523     4200966   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2             524       54272   431738842+   5  Extended
/dev/sda3           54273       60801    52444192+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5   *         524         588      522081   83  Linux
/dev/sda6             589        7116    52436128+  83  Linux
/dev/sda7            7117       54272   378780538+  83  Linux

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