Succes at last: XP, Vista, 2x Slackware

B

bartmans

Member
Hi,

Well that took some doing. I originally wanted to have both Ubuntu and Slackware 12 but I couldn't work that one out. So I ended up with 2x Slackware (one for tinkering, one for working). EasyBCD made it easy to dualboot XP and Vista but here's what I had to do.

I started out with installing XP, Vista and Kubuntu on my new SATA drive. Got triple boot to work in one go (compliments to EasyBCD). I then wanted to add an existing Slackware on my old IDE/PATA drive.This I couldn't get to work. Tried everything, messed up the Grub for Kubuntu, started again. Stopped for a few days.

Then I removed Kubuntu, added another Slackware to the same IDE drive, installed them both with EasyBCD, looked in the c:\nst directory for the corresponding .mbr files and replaced them with ones I made using:
dd if=/dev/hdc1 of=slackwork.bin bs=512 count=1
dd if=/dev/hdc3 of=slackplay.bin bs=512 count=1
that worked.

Wish: being able to give your own filename to the nst_lilo.mbr files. The first one is obvious the second one generated is rather long.

If there's anything the developers need to improve the detection of Lilo boot records, let me know.

Bart
 
Hi Bart, welcome to NST.

Thanks for sharing your feedback, I'm sure others will find it helpful.

I'm not clear on what the original problem with EasyBCD was? Was the bootsector image being created by EasyBCD not working for the second Slackware install, but the first did? Or did neither bootsector image created by EBCD work for Slackware on the IDE drives?
 
Computer Guru said:
I'm not clear on what the original problem with EasyBCD was? Was the bootsector image being created by EasyBCD not working for the second Slackware install, but the first did? Or did neither bootsector image created by EBCD work for Slackware on the IDE drives?
Click to expand...
Neither bootsector image created on the IDE drive worked. I tried installing both Slackware / Lilo and (K)Ubuntu / Grub and couldn't get it to work with EasyBCD.

I then copied the bootsector for both the Slack and Ubuntu partitions. Only the one pointing to Slack booted. Ubuntu wouldn't boot even after trying to install Grub with root (hd0,1), setup (hd0,1) and then manually copying the bootsector to the NST folder. So eventually I gave up on Ubuntu and am currently trying to get Compiz / Beryl to work on Slack :smile: Bit more work but more fun and eductional.

I had also installed Ubuntu on the SATA drive and that worked perfectly the first time (if you remember to tell the Ubuntu installer not to install to the MBR). But I wanted for some reason the install the Linuxii to the second hard drive.

I read on this forum that combining SATA and IDE in a dualboot setup is not recommended. I'm beginning to see why.
 
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