Linux Vista and Fedora 9 dual boot question

I was just about to install Fedora 9 Beta last night, when I suddenly realised I didn't know what would happen if I let GRUB install itself to sda1 instead of the Linux disk (sdc) and move the Vista bootloader from the MBR of the first hard drive.

I'm sure Glider will be able to answer this one, but I'm wondering if Vista will throw fifty fits or whether the system will boot into GRUB and then allow me to select the Vista bootloader to select XP or Vista, just like my old dual boot system did (Fedora 8 and XP).

I may just do it anyway and see what happens...

Andy

 

I did it by accident. Overwrote the vista bootloader with grub.

It works fine - no complaints from me!

It's also a little easier to change the config on grub than vista.

 

That's what I thought would happen. I just didn't want to do it and then find that I had to mess about with the Vista bootloader.

Thanks for the info.

Andy

 

All GRUB does (on 99% of installs now from the Linux OS) is find any existing OS's (even ones on a seperate partition or drive) and add them to the Bootlist. Far easier then changing boot order!

 

GRUB is much more intelligent then the MS bootloaders (combined), so don't worry about it

 

Oops, refreshing made me double post!

 

Also, if it does mess up and you want to put the Vista bootloader back, you can do so using the Vista install disc.
Under "repair installation -> Startup repair" or somesuch.

 

Okay. I'll let you know what happens. I tried it this morning (downloaded the install DVD overnight and burnt it this morning) by simply doing a memtest. It hung 50% through the first test (Memtest+ v 2.01) Hopefully, this isn't a foretaste of things to come.

Andy

 

Got Fedora 9 beta installed with no problems. Cannot update because of what looks like a bug in the Update System program (bugzilla bug report number 441773) but the system runs very sweetly. Firefox 3 looks very nice. I might download the beta for Windows tonight.

On the subject of windows, I'm slightly annoyed. I installed GRUB as the bootloader and set it to boot the Windows Bootloader by default. No problem getting into XP, but Vista is borked. It only gives me a message saying that the system.exe file (I think) is corrupted and do I want to repair Windows? I didn't have time to do anything with it last night, so it looks like I'll be fiddling with Vista instead of Fedora tonight.

Has anyone got any thoughts on why XP boots fine, but Vista doesn't? Note that the setup I've got has XP, Vista and Fedora on separate disks. XP on SATA0, Vista on SATA1 and Linux on SATA2. GRUB has been installed on sda1 (replacing the Windows bootloader, which I think it has moved somewhere else and now Vista won't play).

Any help people can give me would be appreciated.

Andy

 

Sorry can't help you there, just wanted to say that I have GRUB and it works fine with Vista for me, so I'm not sure what happened to yours

 

Well, a quick reboot with the Vista disk helped enormously. I can now boot into Vista, XP or Fedora with no problems. Looks like GRUB moving the bootloader changed the partition reference in the bootloader. Strange.

Thansk for the help guys. As always, when building a new computer, it's a constant learning curve.

Andy