On 09/13/2011 11:13 PM, Bob Lightfoot wrote:
Dear Fellow Testers:
Since F16-Beta.TC1 I have been trying to build a working dual
boot windows xp sp3 and fc16 VM. So far I have not succeeded. What
follows are the particular trials and failures. I would welcome
suggestions as I know some have succeeded in this endeavor.
1. The host system is an HP m9040n Pavillion Elite running Fedora 14
x86_64 with qemu-kvm and libvirtd.
2. The initial VM was 30GB VM running windows xpsp3 and fully updated.
I also ran chkdsk /P and chkdsk /R from windows and confirmed it was
clean as far as windows was concerned. I then backed up the VM with tar
-cxf vm_backup.tar.gz VM.img
3. Attempting to use the F16 installer and the shrink option resulted
in a fail from an ntfsresize error.
4. Using the F16 installer and switching to tty2 and running ntfsresize
and fdisk manually results in a successful install of F16 if I use the
free space option. There is no Windows Option on the grub menu
however. To get a Windows boot option one has to run commands : yum
install os-prober ; grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg ;
grub2-install /dev/sda. This windows boot menu option , however, fails
to boot windows instead it returns to the gpxe boot screen and then grub
menu. The Fedora Grub2 Entry works as expected.
5. Using Partition Magic from windows to resize the ntfs partition and
create free space allows one to use the F16 installer for a successful
install of F16 if I use the free space option. There is no Windows
Option on the grub menu however. To get a Windows boot option one has
to run commands : yum install os-prober ; grub2-mkconfig -o
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg ; grub2-install /dev/sda. This windows boot menu
option , however, fails to boot windows instead it returns to the gpxe
boot screen and then grub menu. The Fedora Grub2 Entry works as expected.
6. Using Partition Magic from windows to resize the ntfs partition and
create free space allows one to use the F15 installer for a successful
install of F15 if I use the free space option. There is a Windows
Option on the grub menu and Dual Boot works for F15/WinXP. Using the
F16 Installer and Upgrade with skip bootloader option produces a system
with only a Windows Grub1 entry. It is then possible to manually
bootstrap F16 to boot from Grub1. This Dual Boot F16/WinXP with grub1
system works fine.
7. Taking the F16/WinXP Dual Boot Grub1 system and executing the
commands : yum erase grub ; yum install grub2 ; grub2-mkconfig -o
/boot/grub2/grub.cfg ; grub2-install /dev/sda produces as grub2 boot
option for both. This windows boot menu option , however, fails to boot
windows instead it returns to the gpxe boot screen and then grub menu.
The Fedora Grub2 Entry works as expected.
I realize that a successful dual boot system is not our first
priority, but was hoping the vast pool of experience might be able to
shed some light on this issue as to what I am missing.
Bob Lightfoot
The key for me has always been to make sure windows is installed first
and then when installing linux (grub1 or 2) point the bootloader to the
linux /boot partition which is almost always some partition other than
the first on the first boot drive, i.e., /dev/sda[n] where n is greater
than 1. You can then chainload to the windows partition from the grub
boot menu.
--
Regards,
OldFart