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| Thread ID: 124748 | 2012-05-17 03:50:00 | New Linux install multi-boot problem | Tony (4941) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1275834 | 2012-05-17 03:50:00 | I've just installed PCLinuxOS, which looks great. My only problem (so far :)) is getting it to play nice and multi-boot with the other OSs on the machine. I should say, and I recognise that this may well be what is complicating matters, that I have 4 physical disks, 3 SATA each with several partitions, and 1 IDE. I have Win7 and Win8 on one SATA disk, and Vista on another SATA disk. The IDE has 3 partitions, 2 Linux and one Linux swap. When I installed it said it had installed GRUB. When I boot, I get my "normal" options, but there is no Linux option. If I change the boot order in BIOS to make the Linux disk first, I get what I assume is the GRUB text menu. This will boot PCLinuxOS, but if I try the single "Windows" option, it peters out saying it can't find the correct files. I've used EasyBCD under Win7 to try to load an entry for Linux, but whichever partition on the "Linux disk" I point it at, it won't work when I boot. If I select that option, I just get a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Any ideas? |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1275835 | 2012-05-17 04:36:00 | Yes, Does your motherboard's BIOS have a quick boot selection option? Mine is to press esc on the laptop, then a small BIOS menu comes up and I select my USB flash drive. That way you could just boot straight to the Linux drive when you want to without worrying about configuring GRUB or the BCD Then later if you decide not to keep the Linux installation you won't have wasted any effort. |
KarameaDave (15222) | ||
| 1275836 | 2012-05-17 04:54:00 | It's odd, it should just work, actually. The fact that Ubuntu couldn't correctly identify your Windows installations and that your current GRUB install can't load the Windows entry (and in fact, doesn't list all of your Windows installations separately) leads me to believe there is something funny with the way your Windows bootloaders may be set up. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1275837 | 2012-05-17 04:56:00 | Yes, Does your motherboard's BIOS have a quick boot selection option? Mine is to press esc on the laptop, then a small BIOS menu comes up and I select my USB flash drive. That way you could just boot straight to the Linux drive when you want to without worrying about configuring GRUB or the BCD Then later if you decide not to keep the Linux installation you won't have wasted any effort.I know what you mean. Yes on the laptop, no on the multi-boot PC. |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1275838 | 2012-05-17 04:57:00 | That's really comforting :(. Anything I can do about fixing the windows bootloader? | Tony (4941) | ||
| 1275839 | 2012-05-17 05:07:00 | That's really comforting :(. Anything I can do about fixing the windows bootloader? I'm not really sure because I've never had that problem... I've got XP and Windows 7 installed on two physically separate drives with their own bootloaders per each drive. GRUB lists both and can boot both. Maybe you've got just one copy of the bootloader that runs all 3 of your Windows installations? Which Windows drive is the BIOS set to boot from? What happens if you tell it to boot from the other? Try running the terminal in Linux, and running 'update-grub' and post here what it outputs. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1275840 | 2012-05-17 05:14:00 | OK, I'll try that. In the meantime, here is what EasyBCD says about my configuration: 3805 |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1275841 | 2012-05-17 05:23:00 | This is what happened: [tony@localhost ~]$ update-grub bash: update-grub: command not found [tony@localhost ~]$ BTW, note I am posting this from FF under Linux. :) |
Tony (4941) | ||
| 1275842 | 2012-05-17 05:37:00 | Perhaps try 'update-grub2' instead Note, while typing commands in Linux, you should be able to press Tab halfway through to auto-complete the command or show various options. Then again, it might only work in Ubuntu... |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1275843 | 2012-05-17 05:41:00 | Same response. If I hit Tab it doesn't give me that as an alternative: [tony@localhost ~]$ upda update-alternatives update-localtime updatedb update-menus update-desktop-database update-mime-database update-ldetect-lst update-usbids.sh [tony@localhost ~]$ |
Tony (4941) | ||
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