dual boot with windows 7

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

bought a new primary harddrive, decided to go for a dual boot enviroment again

so what i had was

sda1 windows7
sda2 data

what i did then was create an image of my windows partition with ntfsclone, repartioned my sda to

sda1 boot (grub)
sda2 /
sda3 empty ntfs partition

installed gentoo and moved my windows 7 partition back to sda3 with ntfsclone

gentoo ofc boots fine but i cannot figure out why grub just wont boot my windows7 os.

this is what i have in my grub.conf for booting windows

title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1

and this is what i get on my screen when i pick windows from my grub boot menu

rootnoverify (hd0,2)
makeactive
chainloader +1

and a flashing cursor below.....

any idea what might fix my problem?

disi · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:18 pm Post subject:

Hi,

here is my grub.conf:

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

tried your grub config and same result - it just hangs.

point is sda is a ssd.
sdb stupid normal drive - so putting windows on the second drive is kinda meh.

this is my fdisk -l

disi · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 9:50 pm Post subject:

Can you "repair" your Windows installation? Then you could boot from a liveCD and write grub back into the mbr...
That's all I could think of

_________________
Gentoo on Uptime Project - Larry is a cow

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

yeah, i thought about this too - windows found something and said its gonna repair and reboot - but nothing happens after that.
when i started from the windows dvd a second time this message wasnt displayed any more and i was able to click through the menus and run the repair process. all tests came back positive but again that didnt help with the booting problem.

i read in another forum that if u move a windows installation from one to another partition u have to edit the boot.ini but since windows7 doesnt have a boot.ini any more i have no idea where to look next... i have absolutely no idea what to do next. and its funny that there is nothing to be found on google about this issue.

thanks for your help.

disi · Posted: Wed Feb 23, 2011 10:36 pm Post subject:

I have no system to test on atm. is there no recovery console on the Windows 7 DVD?
From there it should be bcdedit to configure the bootloader.

//edit: here is what I get from my Ultimate win7
start command prompt and then bcdedit
http://ompldr.org/vN2piMQ
_________________
Gentoo on Uptime Project - Larry is a cow

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

i will check that tomorrow and report back - i am going to bed now

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

ok, i checked bcdedit and tried to change the device and osdevice partitions to

\Device\HarddiskVolume3

but windows as stupid as it is changes it instantly to C:

maybe thats ok but it doesnt help me at all and i have no idea what really happens when the cursor just sits there and flashes after i picked windows from my grub menu.

i mean it looks like as if it just doesnt find the correct files to boot and just hangs because of it.

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

what i did now is i installed w7 on sda3, bootet into my linux reinstalled grub and ofc w7 boots as expected.

so it has to do with my ntfsclone image. if i just knew what files are involved in the w7 boot process.

bcdedit looks different now - no idea why....

disi · Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 9:11 am Post subject:

Ph0eniX · Posted: Fri Feb 25, 2011 11:54 pm Post subject:

h0mer`- · Apprentice Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 215

didnt know you can assign volume letters to partitions with diskpart but i'll keep that in mind for later

disi · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:23 am Post subject:

Just to let you know:
Win7 SP1 fails without that small system partition...
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/windows-7-windows-server-2008-r2-service-pack-1-sp1-installation-error-0x800F0A12
_________________
Gentoo on Uptime Project - Larry is a cow

kimmie · Guru Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 531 Location: Australia

I just installed a laptop dual-booting with Windows 7; the boot has changed a lot since XP. Like disi says, I think you need that small boot partition.

I also read reports of suspend/hibernate issues when booting grub -> Windows, so I decided to play it as safe as possible and boot the other way around (Windows boot loader -> grub). I left the windows partitions alone except for shrinking the large C: partition from within Windows 7 using disk manager, and then I pretty much followed this guide: http://www.iceflatline.com/2009/09/how-to-dual-boot-windows-7-and-linux-using-bcdedit/ - it covers a great deal about the windows boot process as well as the dual-boot howto.

cach0rr0 · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:07 am Post subject:

disi · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2011 9:14 am Post subject:

Updates work fine, it's just SP1 that fails for me... and Windows Virtual PC (needed for XP Mode and only tried once) didn't want to install.

p.s. the last time I booted into Win7 was before SP1 was released, that's why I noticed.
Date Published: 3/15/2011
_________________
Gentoo on Uptime Project - Larry is a cow

kimmie · Guru Joined: 08 Sep 2004 Posts: 531 Location: Australia

Hmmmm.... Ok, I'm not sure sure about that extra partition now... at a closer look, it's a Windows PE environment (customised by Lenovo) for system recovery. Seems the system boots first there, puts up a sign saying "press the blue button for system recovery" and then if I don't press anything it chain loads the Windows 7 bootloader on the C: partition.

My guess is that Microsoft has decided that having a recovery environment as standard is a good idea, especially since a lot of machines are sold without any installation media at all. No problem booting without it, but some installers etc. are going to expect it to be there.