Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Load NTLDR from GRUB?

[Beso <givemesugarr@gmail.com>]

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2007/10/28, Etaoin Shrdlu <shrdlu@unlimitedmail.org>:
>
> On Sunday 28 October 2007, Beso wrote:
>
> http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/
>
> The article is about multibooting, but it also does a good job of
> explaining how windows boot.


hmmm i still didn't understand  :-( maybe this is something like a religious
mystery....



I have /dev/hda1 ext2, /dev/hda2 ext2, /dev/hda3 HPFS, then various logical
partitions up to /dev/hda12. /dev/hda4 is the extended partition. Grub
cannot start Win XP. I don't see how that fits this theory.



hmmmm.... what's your windows partition?! i can only see exts and hpfs,
which is not meant to work with windows xp:

Windows 95 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95> and its successors Windows
98 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_98>, Windows
ME<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_ME>could only read/write HPFS
when mapped via a network share, but could not
read it from a local disk. They listed the
NTFS<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS>partitions of networked
computers as "HPFS", because NTFS and HPFS share the
same filesystem identification number in the partition table.

Windows NT 3.1 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1> and
3.51<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51>had native
read/write support for local disks and could even be installed
onto an HPFS partition.

Windows NT 4 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_4> still could read
and write from local HPFS formatted drives however, using HPFS was
discouraged starting with Windows NT 4 and in subsequent versions. Starting
with Windows 2000 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_2000> the filesystem
driver pinball.sys enabling the read/write access was removed from the
default installation. Pinball.sys was included on the installation media for
Windows 2000 and could still be manually installed and used with some
limitations.[*citation
needed<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources>
*] Later Windows versions did not ship with this driver.

Windows XP Professional allows to read and write like Windows 2000 Since the
they are similar in code.

so if you're using winzoz xp with hpfs of course you cannot boot inside
it.... the driver for the fs support lacks with xp. of my experience from xp
sp2 you cannot use any fs that is not ntfs, or be forced to have a difficult
experience.

I believe the partition number is not really important, as long as:
- the partition is set as bootable (grub might be able to do that
automagically)
- all the win boot files reside fully inside the first 1024 cylinders of the
drive (so preferably: the partition itself should start and end in those
first 1024 cyls.)

or something to that effect.

don't be to obscure!!!! for windows xp to work there are 2 important things:
1. install it before linux
2. have the partitions on hd removed except the unix ones (ext,reiserfs acc)
that aren't supported by windows, or manually hide them with some tool
3. install linux, install grub and configure it to boot from (hd0,1) with
chainloader+1 if your windows partition is the second.

ps. installing xp from extended partition is nonsense, if that's the only
windows partition in the system. it still needs a primary bootable partition
in which to insert the ntldr and some other stuff.
pps. USE THE FOLLOWING AT YOUR OWN RISK:
the last option of installing xp is to have a linux /boot partition
formatted with fat32 and install the ntldr and the system files of windows (
config.sys and the ones that are in the c:\ directory) inside there. but in
this way you could experience a really bad experience if windows does
something inside there (it needs to have full access to that partition or it
will not boot) and makes your system unbootable. so, after you've considered
a lot this workaround and want to try it be sure at 110% that you have at
least 3-4 working /boot backups and that you'd be able to boot inside a
linux enviroment to fix the partition.
-- 
dott. ing. beso

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