Vista/EasyBCD or Fedora/Grub problem???

R

rickhg12hs

Member
Hey folks. EasyBCD is a great tool and helped setup my Vista/Fedora dual boot laptop. It's worked great for months.

Now, unfortunately, only Vista boots properly. After selecting "Fedora 7" from the Vista bootloader menu, the screen is cleared and in the upper left corner is displayed "Grub Read Error". 8-(

Since a Grub read error is displayed, does that mean the Vista bootloader has chained properly and the problem lies solely with Grub?

BTW, with the Fedora 7 Rescue CD I can see that everything seems to still be in the Linux partition (/dev/sda5). I also ran grub from the Linux commandline:

Code: 
root (hd0,4)
setup (hd0,4)
I still have the same symptoms. 8-(

Even if this is not an EasyBCD issue, any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
 
^ and it will be im sure! :smile:

hello rick sir

well... idk anything much about easybcd lol sorry :frowning:

Computer Guru should be back to help if not, he will be back later.
 
^ no im of no use really.. i welcome people just about all i do.... :frowning: oh well i hope CG will have a solution for you, he's really smart!
 
^ i think i just learned about that today

turing test as in how intelligent computers are? or what?

"a machine has artificial intelligence when there is no discernible difference between the conversation generated by the machine and that of an intelligent person."
Click to expand...
- allen turing

same one?
 
Hi Rick, as Kahai said, welcome to NeoSmart Technologies.

You're correct in your assumption: this is a pure GRUB-based error. Sounds like the Fedora partition was modified somehow (slightly or otherwise) that is stopping the GRUB image EasyBCD made from locating Fedora - no problem.

Follow the instructions @ Linux - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki (I recommend the Super GRUB Disk ones) to reinstall GRUB to the Fedora bootsector.
Boot back into Vista. Delete the old Fedora entry and create a new one (always use the latest version of EasyBCD) then reboot to test.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.
 
Thank you both for the welcome.

Computer Guru said:
You're correct in your assumption: this is a pure GRUB-based error. Sounds like the Fedora partition was modified somehow (slightly or otherwise) that is stopping the GRUB image EasyBCD made from locating Fedora - no problem.
Click to expand...

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding. What GRUB image has EasyBCD made?

Computer Guru said:
Follow the instructions @ Linux - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki (I recommend the Super GRUB Disk ones) to reinstall GRUB to the Fedora bootsector.
Boot back into Vista. Delete the old Fedora entry and create a new one (always use the latest version of EasyBCD) then reboot to test.

Good luck, and let us know how it goes.
Click to expand...

I'll try this, and I'm still curious as to why my previous GRUB try has not worked:

Code: 
root (hd0,4)
setup (hd0,4)
This is the first recommended way from the wiki to re-install GRUB.
 
My Vista/Fedora dual boot is now working again!

While that is great news, I'm still very puzzled by what caused the problem to begin with, and also what exactly fixed it. Here's what I did ...

I had already used Grub dozens of times to re-install it on the Linux partition with:

Code: 
root (hd0,4)
setup (hd0,4)
I'm now wondering if that was ever necessary to fix the problem since the "Grub Read Error" display never disappeared with this alone.

I downloaded/installed the latest version of EasyBCD (v. 1.7) and deleted the reference to the Fedora option. I also used the "Reset BCD storage" option in the diagnostics window. I then used "Add an entry" to enter the Fedora option. EasyBCD makes this very much easier now that it displays all the partitions for you in the pulldown. I then hit the "Save" button pretty much everywhere throughout the application to make sure the right things were saved. (Perhaps I should have read more of the documentation to learn what was really required to save.)

After reboot, the Fedora option appeared and selecting it launched the Fedora Grub and then it booted into the selected Fedora OS. Yea!!!!!!!

So my question at this point is, how did the Vista bootloader (with EasyBCD's help?) launch Grub so that it produced "Grub Read Error" as described in previous postings? Somehow, using a new EasyBCD install and re-doing the chainloading fixed everything. How did it do that?

Regardless, without EasyBCD I'm sure I'd still be fumbling around trying to dual boot Vista with Fedora. Thanks NST!
 
You're welcome, Rick...

I think the problem was in not re-creating the entry in the old EasyBCD - the chainload'd GRUB doesn't get updated until you delete and re-create the linux entry in EasyBCD, so any GRUB reinstalls were pretty much ineffective if you didn't update the entry with EasyBCD.

At any rate, congratulations :smile:
 
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