Is it possible to chainload another boot loader (i.e. grub) from the vista bootloader

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frank
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Frank

I have a bunch of machines with two hard disks. One for windows, one for
linux. I would like to boot linux from the windows bootloader by loading
GRUB. I would like to do this by making one of the options on the windows
boot loader point to the MBR of the linux disc. I tried to put an image of
GRUB on my windows disc but that didn't work. I wonder if pointing the
windows boot loader to the MBR on the linux disc would be simpler.

Thanks for any help,
 
Frank said:
I have a bunch of machines with two hard disks. One for windows, one for
linux. I would like to boot linux from the windows bootloader by loading
GRUB. I would like to do this by making one of the options on the
windows boot loader point to the MBR of the linux disc. I tried to put
an image of GRUB on my windows disc but that didn't work. I wonder if
pointing the windows boot loader to the MBR on the linux disc would be
simpler.
Click to expand...

The simplest way, IMO, is to use grub as the primary bootloader and
let it chainload the Windows partition. This needs one new entry in
the grub.conf file:

title=Windows
root (hd0,0) <=== This is my Windows partition, of course
chainloader +1

If you choose that item from the grub boot menu, you will go to
the Windows boot menu where you can then pick between Vista and
XP, etc.

I know you can use XP's ntldr to chainload any other system, but
I don't yet know how to do it from Vista. Using ntldr you add a
new item in boot.ini which points to a *copy* of the boot sector
for your linux partition, which you get by using dd to copy it
to a new 512-byte file which you name linux.bts, for example.
Rather complicated by comparison.
 
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