Jerry, believe me, I'd like to help.
We just simply don't have the sheer amount of resources and time required to do such a thing. As I'm sure you know, Linux differs so greatly from one distribution to another, and our couple of programmers just can't keep up with
both the coding and the documenting in detail.
And of course, it doesn't help that 99% of the people that figure out how to do something thanks to these forums don't bother to post back with the exact details of what worked for them.
EasyBCD is a community project. We need your help to make it work.
I'm trying to walk you through this.
We're a non-profit organization making this software for free. The "scanty documentation" you are referring to took 2 months of research and constant testing to put together. You have no idea how long it takes to boot into Windows, change a single file, reboot into the bootloader, realize it doesn't work, reboot Windows, change again; six or seven
hundred times over to get that “scanty” documentation in place.
Now, if, at the end of all this, you get your system working; maybe you users can contribute some documentation as well? We did put out a request for help before the docs even went live, but no one bothered to reply:
http://neosmart.net/blog/2007/wanted-documentation-experts/
Now, here's how this is going to work.
I'm going to explain
how it works, and we'll figure out - step by step - why it isn't.
Now when you want to boot Linux, you install GRUB to the bootsector of the partition you want.
The bootsector is the first couple of bytes in the partition itself. It's not removed by formatting the partition.
Generally speaking:
1) You turn on your PC
2) Your BIOS accesses the MBR of the primary hard drive, and kicks off a program that resides there.
3) The program (bootloader – in this case, Vista's BCD) connects to the bootsector of the drive that needs to be accessed, and kicks off yet another program there. With Windows, this is generally a helper sequence that simply determines where the configuration files are stored, and you don't see this happening. But with Linux, it'll start GRUB from the bootsector there.
4) The bootsector bootloader starts the operating system.
Now the problem is, the Vista BCD refuses to recognize any bootloader-helper program that lives in the bootsector unless it belongs to Vista or a previous version of Windows.
So EasyBCD takes that bootsector, copies it to a file on a Windows partition (in this case, the main drive), and tells Vista to load it from there. This requires quite a lot of hacking to get it right (on the programmers' side of things) because the bootloader helper script was never intended to be just run like a normal program.
Now what you do to make it work:
Install GRUB to the bootsector.
Boot into EasyBCD.
Tell EasyBCD to copy the bootsector from the Linux partition to a file, and store it in \NST\file
of the main partition of the main drive on your pc.
EasyBCD tells Windows Vista: “Hey you, connect to the file stored in the same drive and partition that your bootloader is on in the \NST\ directory!”
You reboot and select “Linux” from the Vista BCD menu.
Vista searches for this file, and one of three things happens:
Either the file is found, it contains proper working data, and everything goes well.
The file is
not found, and Vista just doesn't know what to do.
Vista can find the file, but it ends up containing wrong, inaccurate, or otherwise unusable data.
In the first case, you're all set.
In the second, you've gotta figure out
why EasyBCD didn't create that file. At the moment, the most likely thing is that EasyBCD either couldn't find the Linux drive to make a copy of the file from, or couldn't identify the Vista bootloader drive to save the file there.
To debug at this point, you would use SGD to make sure that you've got the right drive/partition combo, and then you would post a copy of the “Detailed Output” window (preferably in [ code] [/ code] bbcode blocks) in a new post here, and we'd most likely tell you it's because your bootloader isn't installed right due to some long-standing non-standard configuration on your system – which EasyBCD 1.6 uses intelligent heuristics to work around.
Now in the 3rd and last scenario, it means one or more of the following happened:
The GRUB you copied to the bootsector didn't install right.
You entered a wrong drive/partition number in EasyBCD.
The drive numbers while installing GRUB are different than the numbers out of it.
GRUB didn't install to the partition.
RAID drive issues.
Having mixed SATA and IDE drives.
The most important factor in this last scenario is how you boot into the GRUB repair disk (live linux) or how you boot into Vista.
NEVER choose to “temporarily boot from a CD/DVD”, change the boot order and then change it back (of drives), and NEVER follow the “press F12 to select boot device” prompt. EVER.
In the BIOS, set your boot order to
DVD/CD
Hard Drive
Set the drive order to
Main
Secondary
etc.
NEVER CHANGE IT.
Boot into SGD/Linux Recovery by sticking the CD/DVD in the drive. Reboot and take the CD/DVD out.
Boot into Vista. Give EasyBCD the numbers.
GRUB may order SATA and IDE drives one way, and Windows may order them another (if you have bothed SATA and IDE drives).
As for RAID partitions, that's just a whole big mess and since none of our developers have RAID systems (because no one bothers to donate, so we can't buy new gear just to check out how it works and make new docs about it) – you'd have to figure that out by yourself though it shouldn't differ too greatly from everything else.
That's it
I don't how much details you need to get past the “scanty” level, hopefully this'll change your mind.
Now, with this info at hand, provide me with the information I need to help you troubleshoot your problem.
Follow the steps closely, pay attention to the details, take note of your hardware settings, then let me know so I can help.
EasyBCD is free software. We only benefit if our users benefit and tells others to use it too. Everything we do, we do it for you guys – yet it doesn't seem to matter.
