Blank screen booting Linux

Here's some more data. If I delete the MacOS entry, and create a linux entry with the GRUB not installed checkbox checked, I can boot to my Linux partition. The GRUB menu that comes up after selecting NeoSmart Linux is fine, and everything works.

To me, this proves that the Linux install is OK, with the possible exception of the GRUB boot sector. No data on that yet.

My next experiment was to attempt to create a Linux entry (w/o the checkbox checked) while monitoring with sysinternals' procmon to see what was going on. Needle in a haystack, of course, and we're talking a big haystack. Still, I can see where the child process, bootgrabber, opens to \Device\HarddiskVolume4 and successfully reads 512 bytes. It then tries to create the aforementioned file in C:\NST, and the call to CreateFile fails with a "NAME INVALID" error. Not too surprising. But apparently, your code goes forward and creates the entry as if everything went just fine.

So where did bootgrabber get the bad file name from? Well, it appears that EasyBCD passed it on the command line:

PID: 3108, Command line: "C:\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin\bootgrabber.exe" /grab /d 0 /p 4 /file "C:\NST\nst_.mbr"
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So, the root of the problem would appear to be in EasyBCD where it's figuring out where it wants bootgrabber to store the retrieved boot sector.

Hope this helps.

Addendum:

And, if I execute
"C:\Program Files\NeoSmart Technologies\EasyBCD\bin\bootgrabber.exe" /grab /d 0 /p 4 /file "C:\NST\nst_1.mbr"
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instead, I get a 512 byte file with that name in c:\nst. No surprise there.
 
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Interesting. Thanks a million for doing the ground work on this, tastewar.

So EasyBCD's the one being stupid, not BootGrabber. That's a heck of a relief since BootGrabber was a nightmare to develop.

Let me take a look at what EasyBCD thinks it's doing and get back to you.

Addendum:

Tastewar, I've sent you an email that may just possible fix your problem. Absolutely no guarantees, just a shot in the dark.
 
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Just wondering where this issue stands from your perspective, C.G. When we left off, we had learned that EasyBCD was constructing a bad command line for bootgrabber with an ASCII 1. Bootgrabber appeared to work fine when passed the correct arguments. But with the latest build, bootgrabber crashes on my PC, which leaves the dropdown disk/partition menu empty.
 
A stupid question

Hello Guru and all others, there appears to be very little information on Linux here. I wish to install Ubuntu on my Vista machine but I cannot get it to boot in Ubuntu. The chief problem seems to be not having the proper driver for the nVIDIA card and no one that I know seems to know as to how to accomplish this feat. Toshiba and Linux both do not support this issue.
 
Citizenview said:
Hello Guru and all others, there appears to be very little information on Linux here. I wish to install Ubuntu on my Vista machine but I cannot get it to boot in Ubuntu. The chief problem seems to be not having the proper driver for the nVIDIA card and no one that I know seems to know as to how to accomplish this feat. Toshiba and Linux both do not support this issue.
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This is about 1 month after the fact, but...

Welcome to NST, Citizenview. :brows:
Sorry we can't be of much help, but your issue is not really related to EasyBCD. To get general Ubuntu help, a more appropriate place to post your issue would be at the Ubuntu forums. There are lots of knowledgable people over there that could likely help you solve the problem. You can also look over the following link, and find out if your particular nvidia card is supported at the moment (or if its even being considered for support):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=233241
 
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Tastewar, I don't know if you're still around but I'm having the exact problem you have had. It seems like easybcd has a neogrub issue booting OS X and Linux together. If you've come across a solution would you please let me know? Thanks.
 
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