dual boot win2k and gentoo with grub

jester66 · n00b Joined: 01 Jun 2004 Posts: 9

I have win2k on partition 1 of my harddrive, and am planning to use the remaining partitions for gentoo. I have dual booted before with grub, but i found it annoying that first i had to select 'linux' from the ntldr menu, then select my kernel image from the grub menu (ofcourse this is after modifying the boot.ini file). Is there a way to get around this? In other words, can i simply load grub and boot into windows without having to mess with ntldr? I would imagine that if this was possible I would have to install grub on the MBR. However, I have read that sometimes doing this makes it impossible to boot into windows (please correct me if i am wrong).

Also, I have used lilo before and i did not have to mess with ntldr at all during the boot process. I am not sure if i had installed lilo on the MBR as that was a long time ago, and I had gone through a more automated install, and this was with Mandrake. So, i am wondering why it is that i was able to boot directly into windows from lilo.

I have been using a stand alone gentoo box for some time so i am somewhat experienced with gentoo. However after all the reading i have done i still don't understand the boot process. I now need windows on my machine so that i can do some things for work, and would like for everything to run as smoothly and seamlessly as possible.

If i could get some help/advice or even be led to some good documentation on the subject that would be great (BTW, i have done my research, but it still seems to fall short of what i am trying to find out). thanks in advance.

Maedhros · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:07 pm Post subject:

I have used grub to boot to Linux and Windows 2000 successfully when it is installed in the MBR. AFAIK, lilo installs everything in the MBR, including its configuration, so that was why the Windows bootloader didn't appear.
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Lajasha · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:09 pm Post subject:

Well 2 things come to mind if you are happy with using the windows loader then just change the timeout in the grub.conf to 0 and you should not have to select your kernel.

Or when you go through the install just run through it as it is written in the handbook and then you can add an entry into the grub.conf to boot windows.

It is something like this:

kenthepostman · Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2004 10:34 pm Post subject:

If for some reason grub screws up the MBR you can still load the windows MBR again if you have the CD. It's not too hard to do and is an easy fix if things don't work out. I used to dual boot using the windows boot loader and LILO. I found it to be a huge pain because everytime I changed the Lilo config, I had to recreate the linux.bin file windows uses. This time I installed GRUB according to the handbook and had no problems at all.

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