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LAN Party Forums => General Discussion => Started by: .:F3ar0n:. on July 25, 2006, 10:50:23 AM

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: .:F3ar0n:. on July 25, 2006, 10:50:23 AM

Ok

So I have windows media center installed on my pc along with windows xp pro and windows server 2003. They're all on seperate partitions. Yesterday I managed to do something really stupid which made me have to format my windows xp install. Well now that I reinstalled it....when I boot it's only booting to winXP. I know that u have this same issue if you try to install a windows ontop of a linux partition. It rewrites the boot file and clears the linux OS. U have to change the grub to get it to reconize both OS systems again. Well I'm sorta unsure on how to do it with windows.  

Even furthermore...I was wondering if anyone knew any third party apps that have a nice GUI interface for multiple OS boot. Anyways...let me know if anything comes to mind. Off a quick google search I found GaG...but thats about it. Let me know your thoughts of how to fix this issue with xp or some 3rd party app that could help out. Thanks

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: TekieB on July 25, 2006, 10:54:40 AM

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/ Grub is nice, there are windows installers for it. But it is mainly associated with linux. You can do some REALLY cool stuff with it (like network boots, etc)

Look arround (google!) the "boot.ini" file, this is what controls that windows bootloader, somehow this probly got messed up, and you can re-write some of it.

quick goggle search revealed this: http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2337

<oss fanboy rant>
edit 2: it looks like grub/lilo just chain load the windows boot loader, cause M$ doesn't like to support other os-es </oss fanboy rant>

but yeah, so fix your boot ini file, if you are using grub (kinda hinted at first post) that shouldn't matter, as grub just hands it over to the win bootloader, and that looks at the boot.ini, so there is your problem to fix

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: .:F3ar0n:. on July 25, 2006, 11:06:14 AM

Thanks alot Tekie...I knew I had to mod my boot.ini file..but just wasn't sure on how to go about doing it (guess I could of ctrl-c / ctrl-p and try to figure it out that way)

I do wanna check out some cool gui Grubs though...So I'll def give it a shot (how comes all the cool looking Grubs are linux based? Windows should think about that instead of straight black with white text selections. I want some blue...is that so hard 2 ask?)

Thanks again

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: TekieB on July 25, 2006, 11:13:15 AM

Grub is a program, it was written mainly for linux based file systems, and (see rant above) its a pain to intigrate into stuff you can't see the code to/is undocumented.

also, the boot.ini file doesn't seem like something (to me at least) that you want to edit with trial and error :D

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: .:F3ar0n:. on July 25, 2006, 11:34:58 AM

Yeah...only took 2 tries but I got it. I was unsure about the whole thing because of the layout.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Media Center" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I understand the disk number for the hd. I didn't realize at first that the rdisk for this particular case would be the same cause it's all on one big HD...not seperate to seperate controllers. But anyways, unhide the boot.ini file and got it to boot media center sucessfully so I'm happy.

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: sully! on July 25, 2006, 01:57:06 PM

CPU Magazine had an article about boot managers recently. I can't remember all of them, but BootIt NG from Terabyte Unlimited (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/) was their top pick IIRC.

Title: Boot Loaders
Post by: Czar on July 25, 2006, 03:42:29 PM

GAG was one i used once. Seems nice and easy to use.

http://gag.sourceforge.net/