How Risky Is It To Install Grub4dos to MBR/Windows Drive?

[mdiemer]

I an trying to get Puppy Linux 412 and Windows 98 to boot from grub. Windows is on sda. PL is on sdb2. I put grub on sdb2 also. When I boot that drive, PL boots fine, but Windows gets hung up. It boots, but then hangs on the desktop. Windows boots fine from its own drive (sda).

I could try installing grub to sda, but I'm concerned about messing up Windows so that it won't boot at all. Is my fear justified? how great is the risk?

[musher0]

Hello mdiemer.

I haven't used WhideDose in years. My two computers are Puppy only.

With that said, it wasn't risky then to install grub4dos as an option of the
WhineDose boot. and it shouldn't be now. (If you follow the correct
procedure.)

There's a way to install the grub4dos "engine" outside the MBR. The trick,
you see, is to not upset WhineDose, to not puncture its perception that it
is ruling the world!!!

So you let WhineDose boot, and since its launcher now has a 2nd option,
it stops to ask you, it does not boot WhineDose immediately. You specify
"grub" (you type a number, IIRC) and then the usual grub menu shows
up.

It isn't fresh to my memory, but a LUG (Linux User Group) from a city in
the US had a nice and simple explanation of how to do that on its web site.

Best of luck.

[perdido]

I believe musher is referring to something like what is described here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... e80#723229
Which works and is easy.

Win98 is a different animule though.

.

[bigpup]

Install Grub4dos to MBR/Windows Drive will replace the normal windows boot loader.

I think the issue is something about Windows 98 and the way it boots.

For now, I would keep the boot setup the way you have it.

I think I would look for some specific requirements for Windows 98 menu entry in a Grub menu.
Seems the Grub4dos menu entry, for Windows 98, is working, but needs some special tweaking that is specific to Windows 98.

Example:
This works for someone booting with Grub.

Code: Select all

menuentry "Windows 98" {
        insmod chain
        insmod fat32
        set root=(hd0,1)
        chainloader (hd0,1)+1

With your setup (hd0,1) may need to be (hd0,0)

If Grub4dos boot loader was installed to sdb.
On sdb1 you should find the Grub4dos boot menu file menu.lst
Open in a text editor to edit

[mdiemer]

Hello mdiemer.

I haven't used WhideDose in years. My two computers are Puppy only.

With that said, it wasn't risky then to install grub4dos as an option of the
WhineDose boot. and it shouldn't be now. (If you follow the correct
procedure.)

There's a way to install the grub4dos "engine" outside the MBR. The trick,
you see, is to not upset WhineDose, to not puncture its perception that it
is ruling the world!!!

So you let WhineDose boot, and since its launcher now has a 2nd option,
it stops to ask you, it does not boot WhineDose immediately. You specify
"grub" (you type a number, IIRC) and then the usual grub menu shows
up.

It isn't fresh to my memory, but a LUG (Linux User Group) from a city in
the US had a nice and simple explanation of how to do that on its web site.

Best of luck.

Thanks Musher0. I'll have to really look at this. Right now it is probably more than I want to get into. I'm hoping for a quick fix, I admit it! If I don't find it right off, I will be content to select each drive in bios. A bit of a pain, but foolproof, and it works.

Makes a lot of sense Bigpup. It seems so close to working that it must be some simple little tweak. I'll keep on researching it.

[mdiemer]

I believe musher is referring to something like what is described here
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... e80#723229
Which works and is easy.

Win98 is a different animule though.

.

Thanks Perdido. I took a look at the thread you provided, and as I said above to Musher, it looks like more trouble than it is worth at this point. I'm going to continue researching this in hopes of a nice, tidy solution. I guess I've been spoiled by the ease of dual-booting with more recent versions of Windows. I'm even considering upgrading to Windows 2000, or even XP. How crazy is that, upgrading one dead version of Windows to another. God, retirement is boring...

[ozsouth]

Grub4dos bootloader can be removed via ms-sys utility (is in some puppies). Just running it in a console gives you a list of switches - you would run something like:
ms-sys -9 /dev/sda
which would write a win 95/98 mbr. Warning - getting it wrong could render a partition unusable, so use at own risk.

[musher0]

Hello all.

A good alternative for this -- that is often overlooked nowadays -- is
booting from CD or DVD. (Assuming that your PC has a CD/DVD.)

If you have copied your main Puppy sfs on the hard drive, Puppy's boot
process will detect it and switch to it. It will use just the boot part from the
Puppy CD/DVD, not run entirely from it.

Then the Puppy on the HD recognizes the pupsave on the HD and uses it.

It's almost as fast as booting from HD, the advantage being that you are
not disturbing anything from the WhineDose setup.

IHTH.

[mdiemer]

Grub4dos bootloader can be removed via ms-sys utility (is in some puppies). Just running it in a console gives you a list of switches - you would run something like:
ms-sys -9 /dev/sda
which would write a win 95/98 mbr. Warning - getting it wrong could render a partition unusable, so use at own risk.

Thanks ozsouth. I will keep that in mind if the need arises (like I do install grub to MBR and W98 won't boot).

[mdiemer]

Hello all.

A good alternative for this -- that is often overlooked nowadays -- is
booting from CD or DVD. (Assuming that your PC has a CD/DVD.)

If you have copied your main Puppy sfs on the hard drive, Puppy's boot
process will detect it and switch to it. It will use just the boot part from the
Puppy CD/DVD, not run entirely from it.

Then the Puppy on the HD recognizes the pupsave on the HD and uses it.

It's almost as fast as booting from HD, the advantage being that you are
not disturbing anything from the WhineDose setup.

IHTH.

Interesting. I will give that a try. Also, what about booting from Floppy? I did put grub on floppy, but when computer boots from it, all i get is "grub..." at the top left, then nothing else. not sure what I'm supposed to do at that point. It doesn't seem to be a command line.

[mostly_lurking]

Also, what about booting from Floppy? I did put grub on floppy, but when computer boots from it, all i get is "grub..." at the top left, then nothing else. not sure what I'm supposed to do at that point. It doesn't seem to be a command line.

That's not normal. If you installed Grub4Dos on the floppy, it should show a boot menu similar to the one you got when you installed it to sdb. When I tried it, the menu had different colors (green background), but was otherwise pretty much the same. Can you see the Grub4Dos files (grldr, menu.lst, ...) on the floppy? EDIT: I just tried it with Grub instead of Grub4Dos, and got the same problem. So, maybe try the floppy option in Grub4Dos instead.

As musher0 mentioned, you can also boot Puppy from its CD, just like you did before you installed it on the HDD. But as far as I know, you can't use a full install that way. You would have to run it like a frugal install, where it loads its system files - stored inside the .sfs file(s) on the CD - into RAM and creates a savefile on the hard drive to save any changes you make to the system. You can copy its main .sfs file (named pup_412.sfs or similar) from the CD onto the HDD, from where Puppy can load it faster. If Puppy can fit all of its data into RAM so that it doesn't have to access the CD anymore, you can even remove the disk at runtime when you need the CD drive for something else.

Of course, the CD would require you to insert/remove it everytime you want to switch between Windows and Linux. The floppy would probably be a more convenient solution - if you can get it working and it manages to boot Windows.

Booting from the /dev/sdb drive seems to be a bigger problem than it initially seemed, or perhaps your Windows 98 install just really hates Linux bootloaders. (I'm afraid I'm lost on that one... Grub4Dos worked for me, as I mentioned in your other thread, and I couldn't reproduce the "Windows hangs at login/desktop" issue. So I have no idea how to fix that.)

Installing a new bootloader on /dev/sda seems to be the only thing not tried yet apart from the floppy boot (which might be worth another try), but of course, it has the risk of rendering the Windows system unbootable; although, as ozsouth remarked, there may be ways to fix it.

In one of my posts I mentioned a BIOS boot menu that can be invoked by pressing a key (for example, "F12") when the computer boots, that allows to select which hard drive or other device to boot from. Does your computer have something like this? It would be more practical than shuffling boot media around or changing the boot order in the BIOS settings all the time, and it would not require making any changes to the Windows bootloader.

[mdiemer]

[quote
(mostly_lurking)
In one of my posts I mentioned a BIOS boot menu that can be invoked by pressing a key (for example, "F12") when the computer boots, that allows to select which hard drive or other device to boot from. Does your computer have something like this? It would be more practical than shuffling boot media around or changing the boot order in the BIOS settings all the time, and it would not require making any changes to the Windows bootloader.[/quote]

Yes, it is what I have been doing. But it is inconvenient, as I need to reset it to Windows when through, which means shutting down and restarting to make sda default again. You have to do it every time. In my 10 y/o Gateway, I can set a default in bios (F2), and also choose boot drive (F10) on the fly. That way, computer will boot to a default drive, but I just hit F10 to select a different one. But in the 20 y/0 Gateway, there is only one configuration, and it must be done each time. Unless the wife is willing to learn how to do it, I have to remember to change it after using Puppy, or that's what she will get next time she decides to use computer.

[mdiemer]

I think it is best that I just keep Windows drive as default, and use the live CD. By the time I change the boot drive drive in bios, there's not that much difference in boot time. Maybe there's a way to dual boot Windows 98 and Puppy on this system using grub, but for now this seems to be the best solution,

[hamoudoudou]

Windows seven and later : there is no real risk to install Grub4dos in sda1, boot partition in Windows Seven.. But do not install anything else here..
Sda1 in Windows XP is Sda2 Windows Seven.

[musher0]

I think it is best that I just keep Windows drive as default, and use the live CD. By the time I change the boot drive drive in bios, there's not that much difference in boot time. Maybe there's a way to dual boot Windows 98 and Puppy on this system using grub, but for now this seems to be the best solution,

Indeed, in your situation, it would seem so.

[mdiemer]

Actually, I have continued to work on it. I hate to give up. I now have PL Wary 5.5 on sdb2, and frugal install of 412 on sdb1. Both boot from grub4dos. I'm still thinking that the problem is with Windows. I'm going to see if there's anything I can do with the login process in Windows, maybe that is what's hanging things up. Maybe there's something I can do with that.

[Sailor Enceladus]

When I had Windows 98 and Puppy on dual-boot using grub4dos I think my Windows 98 entry in menu.lst looked like this:

Code: Select all

title Windows 98SE
  root (hd0,1)
  chainloader /io.sys
  boot

It was on sda2 (fat32) and puppy was either on sda1 (fat32) or sda3 (ext).

edit: The entry might have also had "hide (hd0,0)" in it so that Windows thought sda2 was the first partition.

[jrb]

I an trying to get Puppy Linux 412 and Windows 98 to boot from grub. Windows is on sda. PL is on sdb2. I put grub on sdb2 also. When I boot that drive, PL boots fine, but Windows gets hung up. It boots, but then hangs on the desktop. Windows boots fine from its own drive (sda).

I could try installing grub to sda, but I'm concerned about messing up Windows so that it won't boot at all. Is my fear justified? how great is the risk?

Complete instructions at: THE Lin'N'WinNewB PROJECT

[mdiemer]

I finally bit the bullet and put grub on sda. It went fine, boots windows with no problem, as well as puppy 412 (frugal) and Wary 5.5 (full). Both puppies are on sdb, 412 on sdb1, the "large" 25GB partition; and Wary on the small 5 GB partition. Windows is on the original drive, a Maxtor 5GB. These drives seem laughable today. But now I have a well-oiled dual booting Windows 98 and Linux system, an old relic but still quite functional. I would put it in the living room as a guest computer, with only linux set up for online work. But unless the wife relents, it will have to stay offline. Doesn't make much sense to me, but there you have it.

Thanks for all the help,

mike

[mikeslr]

I would put it in the living room as a guest computer, with only linux set up for online work. But unless the wife relents, it will have to stay offline. Doesn't make much sense to me, but there you have it.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

It's really difficult to infect your computer with viri, trojans, ransom-ware or other ills if it's off-line. You really have to work at it: download one on a different computer, copy it to some media your off-line computer recognizes, then copy it from that media into your computer, at no stage of this process using any up-to-date software which scans for malware.

I've often wondered why major companies chose the hazards of depending on computer anti-malware as a barrier between the "World-Wild-Web" and sensitive records in databases over hiring clerks to print info received from the Web, then have the printed record scanned into two databases, one for internal use and verification, the second providing a window to the web. In the long run it would certainly be less costly, and that cost would serve the useful purposes of (a) providing a lot of low-level/income entry jobs and (2) stimulating the economy.

mikesLr