Easy does not recognize partition table of sata drive containing linux distros

E

eekie

Member
I have vista installed on two striped disks, the vista bootloader on an IDE disk and three linux distros (ubuntu,fedora, suse) on a sata disk. Ubuntu's grub contains the other two distros and is installed in the MBR of the sata disk. At this moment I boot from the sata disk using grub, but I'd prefer to boot from the IDE disk using Easy BCD 1.72. I have tried it with grub not installed in the boot sector and with neo grub. I copied the ubuntu bootloader into neo grub and now I get the ubuntu grub bootloader on screen when I start from the IDE disk and opt for neo grub.
But when I try to start any of the operating systems I get the following warning twice:
Warning: Unrecognized partition table for drive 80. Please rebuild it using a Microsoft compatible FDISK tool (error=23) Current C/H/S= 16383/253/633
In between the the repeated warning it says: root= (hd0,5)
(hd0,5) is the boot partition of fedora. When I start ubuntu or suse it gives of coaurse the partition belonging to these distros.
What is wrong?
 
When setting up a multiboot between Windows and Linux on separate drives you install one boot loader to cover all distros on the Linux drive while the WIndows drive is first unplugged. That prevents the MS mbr and boot information from being replaced. The EasyBCD tool comes in later once that is done and the Windows drive is later plugged back in.

I ran into that here multibooting an XP/Vista dual boot along with Mandriva 2006 at the time.. Mandriva was installed on the second of the two sata drives following XP there. The Vista boot information had to repaired later with the startup repair tool and then XP added back in. When booting with the XP drive then seeing Mandriva in control there both versions of Windows were seen as options since I could select the Vista boot loader from the OSs detected.

Recently I simply added ubuntu 64 to the dual boot from a 3rd ide added in by not allowing Grub to install into the boot sector since the two sata drives were unplugged when installing the distro. EasyBCD was simply pointed at the ide drive with the new entry added into the Vista BCD.
 
That is not the problem with me. The MBR of vista is not overwritten by Grub. I forced Ubuntu to write the bootloader in the MBR of the sata disk, while the bootloader of vista is written in the MBR of the IDE disk.
When I set the bios to booting the sata disk first I get grub with all the entrees and I can start vista and all linux distro's from there
 
Grub is installed there having detected and added Vista into itself. The same was seen sometime back when running Mandriva 2006 on the second XP drive here and not unplugging the Vista host/boot drive first. That was good! :brows:

Following the repair of Vista's mbr I could still boot the Vista/XP dual boot when setting the XP drive now Mandriva as default there. Once the Vista mbr was good and XP was added in again either drive set as default would see XP and VIsta both load.

I didn't have Mandriva added into the Vista boot option since Neogrub hadn't been installed on the Vista host drive at the time. And that is what would have allowed Mandriva to load like ubuntu does now being on a 3rd ide drive I threw back into the case here.
 
Unplug Ubuntus drive temporarily and re-install the Vista bootloader in EasyBCD. Reboot to verify Vista well boot on its own. Lastly plugin Ubuntu's drive again and reboot to Vista's drive again to verify its still working.

Alternatively, just stick with booting from Ubuntu's drive since grub already has the correct configuration to boot all of them.
 
You can have it both ways anyways. Once I had the VIsta loader corrected I would simply select the XP drive from the boot device menu the bios offers to select that drive instead to see the dual boot as the option to the default being Linux there. At this time once I see the newer release on I will be trying to see that added in like ubuntu was.
 
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