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Thread ID: 140126	2015-08-22 00:16:00	Multi-booting menu problem with Linux	Tony (4941)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1407165	2015-08-22 00:16:00	I have an old PC that I use for experimenting and general messing around. It has 5 HDD of varying degrees of decrepitude, although they do all work. I have installed WinXP, Win10 preview and 2 flavours of Linux. For reasons that I won't bother you I was playing with the hardware and I can no longer access the Linux installations. My multiboot menu shows all the options, and I can reach XP and WIN10, but if I select either of the Linux options I get various Grub error messages and it doesn't work. I know little about Linux so I don't know how to go about repairing this situation. I have a Linux live CD that means I can access the Linux partitions, but I don't know where to go from there. I tried using EasyBCD from XP and set up an entry that pointed to a Linux partition, but that didn't work. I can post the Grub error messages I get if necessary. TIA	Tony (4941)
1407166	2015-08-22 06:43:00	Post the error you get. What you did with the hardware may help too, maybe the drives arent connected that has Linux installed, or the order was changed but this should not affect Linux as they work off a UUID rather than position of drives but the BIOS may need to be told which drive contains the boot record/bootloader. Keep the live cd handy, as this might be how we fix the problem depending on what information you return with. Cheers, KK	Kame (312)
1407167	2015-08-26 07:24:00	Boot the Linux CD and install Grub to your HDD and have it chainload Windows, rather than the other way around. Less likely to screw up...	Agent_24 (57)
1407168	2015-08-26 07:45:00	Boot the Linux CD and install Grub to your HDD and have it chainload Windows, rather than the other way around. Less likely to screw up...Sounds like a good idea - just not sure how to do that (install GRUB I mean, not run the CD). I'm actually probably just going to reinstall Linux from scratch - new distro, should sort it out for me, etc. Also I have several disks, - where do I actually install GRUB?	Tony (4941)
1407169	2015-08-26 09:38:00	If you want Grub to handle the boot configuration, you need to install Grub to whichever HDD the BIOS is going to try to boot from. Or tell the BIOS to boot from whichever HDD has Grub on it... If you install Linux and Grub on the same drive, you can swap\add\remove all your disks around at your heart's content, just be sure if you do change things that you check your BIOS HDD boot order, and then boot into the Linux install first and run update-grub so it corrects any changes and updates the Grub menu accordingly. And of course if you wish to install\upgrade\reinstall Windows on any of the other drives you should probably remove the Linux drive first so Windows doesn't go and happily overwrite Grub with NTLDR or whatever. If you want to install Grub manually, the procedure is outlined here: www.gnu.org If you aren't sure which disk is which, run the Disk Utility or similar program in Linux and check the device names.	Agent_24 (57)
1407170	2015-08-26 10:05:00	What I would prefer is to have the standard windows menu but with the Linux entries added. I assume that is do-able somehow?	Tony (4941)
1407171	2015-08-26 14:29:00	What I would prefer is to have the standard windows menu but with the Linux entries added. I assume that is do-able somehow? I believe so, but I've never done it because Windows loves to mangle things as you have already witnessed. Hopefully someone else can help with that one. Posting the error messages you get from Grub will probably help.	Agent_24 (57)
1407172	2015-08-26 20:16:00	What I would prefer is to have the standard windows menu but with the Linux entries added. I assume that is do-able somehow? Definitely doable as I've done it before. They key is to install Grub on the same partition as Linux itself rather than the bootloader, then use EasyBCD to add Linux.	pcuser42 (130)
1407173	2015-08-27 06:53:00	You can use NTLoader as well but it was never intended to boot any other OS by design apart from Windows. I do recommend sticking with grub. Once setup you really should not have a need to touch it. Common issues usually result in changes to drives, like order or replacements or failing drives. NTLoaders way is different to grub as grub actually understands how to boot Windows, so it can boot to NTLoader, known as chaining because you use one bootloader to boot another bootloader. NTLoader however can't do this and what happens is you add the bootable instructions to Windows where NTLoader can use it. This is basically a copy of the grub MBR, which means any changes to grub, you will have to copy it to Windows again. Not quite chaining because you've duplicated the MBR and shifted it onto a Windows partition to be read. This means you could remove the MBR from Linux, as it will not be used by Windows (don't do it though, its just showing how its irrelevant now.) Should post the error, using a recovery CD/USB may not be necessary but its a surefire way to fix the problem. Depending how far we get in grub, we maybe able to fix it right inside grub's prompt. Just out of curiosity Tony, if issues arrived from NTLoader, how would you have fixed it? Not if Linux wasn't booting, but if Windows failed to boot from NTLoader? Cheers, KK	Kame (312)
1407174	2015-08-27 10:28:00	Thanks everybody for all the suggestions, some of which I actually understand. :) I've not been posting much because (a) real life has intruded and I've had to do other stuff, and (b) I've been trying to sort it out by my own efforts. The situation at the moment is: By booting a SuperGrub CD I did manage to recover one of the Linux installations, however the technique didn't want to work on the other one. When I get another bit of time I'll post a more detailed account of what is happening. I'm very tempted to just re-install the twp Linux distros as they are only there for playing with and don't have any actual useful data associated with them. It is just my inner geek that is making me try to do the recovery. I'm assuming that if I did do the reinstall that would effectively mend the grub menus.	Tony (4941)
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