multi boot XP,7,Fedora 11

R

robberbaron

Member
I don't know if I'm doing this right.

Background: drive 0 - 500 GB (3 partitions, system XP & 2 logical)
drive 1 - 120 GB (all fedora)
drive 2 - 1.5 TB (6 partitions, system Win 7 & 5 logical)

I originally installed XP Pro SP3 X32 on C: drive.
Later installed Win 7 Ultimate X64 on drive 2 on 1st partition (primary)
Used easy BCD 2.0 Beta build 64 to dual boot and it worked like a charm.
Then later used all of drive 1 to install fedora.
Used BCD to multi boot ticking "Grub is not installed" with XP as default boot option followed by
Win 7 and finally Fedora.

When I reboot ------> fedora will boot unless I press any key before timeout expires.
(when I leave the keyboard alone fedora boots up.)
If I press a key....................
Grub --------> select fedora
select other
I select other...............................
Win Boot Manager ------------> XP (default)
7
fedora

If I select xp or 7 they boot right up.
If I select fedora....................
"Booting '/boot/grub/menu.lst'"
and then it hangs.


Ok..... in a perfect world I would like only the win boot manager to pop up with my 3
options and have all of them execute. Am I missing something. When I installed fedora I installed
to drive 1 and booted to drive 0. Should it have been drive 2 (the win 7 boot loader)?

Debug info:

Code: 
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=D:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
resumeobject {ab7e2102-b275-11de-837b-a5e2991dcca1}
displayorder {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
{8f85d1d4-b289-11de-99f7-001cc0393ac1}
{f4cb7647-b3cd-11de-aace-001cc0393ac1}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 30
Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {466f5a88-0af2-4f76-9038-095b170dc21c}
device partition=D:
path \ntldr
description Windows XP Professional SP3
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {8f85d1d4-b289-11de-99f7-001cc0393ac1}
device partition=D:
path \XELD1.1st
description Windows 7 Ultimate X64
Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {f4cb7647-b3cd-11de-aace-001cc0393ac1}
device partition=D:
path \NST\NeoGrub.mbr
description Fedora 11 X64

I'm totally at a loss. Before BCD I had all 3 os working as above with a restart prompting be to select fedora or other pressing other and having the two MS os's as my option.
All I want is a cleaner boot sequence for the other users in my home.
Any thoughts would be appreciated. Love BCD by the way.
 
Hi baron, welcome to NST.
That looks really messed-up.
Disconnect the other 2 HDDs, leaving just W7
Boot the W7 DVD, "repair your computer" / "startup repair" (3 times)
You should now be able to boot W7 with a nice clean BCD
Reconnect the other 2 HDDs, making sure that W7 stays 1st in the BIOS boot sequence.
Run EasyBCD 2.0 on W7, and add the entries for XP and Linux again.
If you installed Linux grub into the Linux boot sector, then everything should boot correctly from the W7 menu.
If however you let Linux put grub somewhere else (which I suspect you did from the strange boot you ended up with), then you might have trouble getting the Linux boot working.
Probably best in that case to reinstall Linux and don't let it put grub anywhere else. (If necessary disconnect the other 2 disks to be sure, though you should be able to control its urge to take over by using the "advanced" options for grub during the install).
If you do disconnect/reconnect, make sure that W7 is reinstated as 1st in the BIOS boot sequence. (some BIOS will dynamically reorder the boot sequence as you disconnect hardware)
 
Thanks for the input Terry. A few questions as this is a bit new to me. It appears as though I need to point linux toward win 7. (I assume that in a perfect world my os install order should have been 7,xp,linux or is that me having a c: mentality) In the past I've dual booted xp and linux always on different hd's and installed linux on 1 and sent the boot to the xp hd. This install of linux is just a lark and a re-install is no big deal. What would happen if I (A) install linux to its own drive and pointed the boot to win 7 or (B) install linux and boot to same. ie; drive 0
xp/ntldr, drive 1 linux/mbr and drive 2 win7?

I also don't understand why after disconnecting the xp and linux drives I need to boot from 7 dvd 3 times in repair/startup repair. I've never used the win7 repair functionality before........ do I just enter into startup repair and then simply restart?
 
If you let Linux install grub anywhere other than to its own partition boot sector, it will rewrite the MBR and take over the boot. You will be multi-booting with Grub not the W7 BCD.
That's fine, but you'll need to manage it manually yourself.
You can't use EasyBCD to manage a Linux controlled boot. It's for manipulating the W7/Vista BCD, so W7 must be controlling the boot for it to have any purpose.
When you dual-booted Linux and XP before, you let grub control the boot instead of XP's NTLDR. The BCD didn't exist back then.
The x3 is just the way the "startup repair" works. It only fixes one thing at a time (ask Microsoft !) and a broken boot might need a new BCD, a new MBR, a new bootmgr.
The truth is, you need to run it as many times as necessary to get the boot working, but it's quicker to type x3, since that's generally what it takes.
 
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