Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[mynot]

Has anyone managed to dual boot Puppy with a pre-existing Windows 7? I have read numerous descriptions of dual booting Puppy with Windows, but only a few deal explicitly with Windows 7.

I have three ntfs partitions. Windows uses sda1 and sda2. Puppy is on sda3. I have a version of grub.exe and menu.lst loaded in c:\boot\grub. I have used bcdedit to specify where everything is.

When I boot I get the expected grub menu, but when I select Puppy, grub.exe crashes saying the application is corrupted. If I select Windows it boots ok.
Thanks
Tony

[nooby]

To find out if the three puppy files are not corrupted you maybe could re-install from a new iso that you check intergrity of?

Another fast test would be to place the three files of puppy on the other partition and change the root(hd0,59 whatever to reflect where they are now. that way you get feedback from a grugal install that the files are ok and the partition maybe not?. Or use unetbootin to place them on a USB to do boot from that one to know they are ok.

Just my naive suggestions to get a hang on what goes wrong.

[davesurrey]

Tony,
Short answer...yes it's quite possible to boot Windows 7 and Puppy...I am doing it on 2 PCs at the mo. It's the same as using Vista and puppy by the way but different from Windows XP/2000/NT.

Suggestion:
Either use Puppy's grub to select booting of either Puppy or Windows. You'll need to add grub to the MBR.
Or use Windows 7 and EasyBCD to boot Windows 7 or point to the grub of puppy. As you have puppy on an ntfs partition ordinary grub (often called grub-legacy) won't work so you need grub4dos for example.

If you prefer to use windows 7 to boot from then I suggest you look and read through EasyBCD. Use google to find it. The documentation is good and it has neogrub which contains grub4dos already.

There are loads of thread here giving more details but if you need more help then you'll have to tell us more eg what your bcd looks like.

Dave

[mynot]

Thanks. My bcdedit output is:


Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {current}
resumeobject {54859e69-954d-11db-8f04-d62e0c89bb6c}
displayorder {current}
{3fe8d324-2f63-11df-a1fc-0019215c5c6d}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 60

Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {current}
device partition=C:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Windows 7
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
recoverysequence {3fe8d318-2f63-11df-a1fc-0019215c5c6d}
recoveryenabled Yes
osdevice partition=C:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {54859e69-954d-11db-8f04-d62e0c89bb6c}
nx OptIn

Real-mode Boot Sector
---------------------
identifier {3fe8d324-2f63-11df-a1fc-0019215c5c6d}
device partition=C:
path \NST\nst_grub.mbr
description Puppy Linux

I deleted all the grubs I had created in various locations, including NST, and started (again) with EasyBCD. When I try to boot to Puppy it now tells me the partition doesn't have ntldr.

Tony

[davesurrey]

I don't see anything wrong in your bcd but wonder what your grub menu.lst looks like.

Could you please send it...not all of it but the bit with Puppy boot stanza in it. eg
title Puppy
kernel /puppy/vmlinuz etc .

The error message is strange as NTLDR is what's needed to boot windows XP/2000 etc and not for windows 7 and certainly not Puppy. Was this a clean install of windows 7 or did you have Xp there before?

Dave

[yorkiesnorkie]

You may want to review this post: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=29356 as it is a very good primer on this subject. The Lin&Win was very interesting reading which is an alternate and less invasive way of booting.

Yorkiesnorkie

[davesurrey]

yorkiesnorkie,
You suggested Lin'N'Win (best to google it like that rather than Lin&Win as you say) but mnot has Windows 7.
Are you sure Lin'N'Win will work with a BCD bootloader?
Dave

[mynot]

Thanks for the replies. I started out with Lin'N'Win but got nowhere. EasyBCD has been more useful.

The machine has never had XP loaded, only Vista upgraded to Win 7, however it is an Acer machine with a proprietary feature on it which causes it to reboot to a limited version of XP in the event of a crash. The first partition on the drive is an 8Gb 'recovery partition'. (I'd like to get rid of the Acer feature but can't find the original Vista disks in case doing do causes problems).

The menu.lst is:

# NeoSmart NeoGrub Bootloader Configuration File
#
# This is the NeoGrub configuration file, and should be located at C:\NST\menu.lst
# Please see the EasyBCD Documentation for information on how to create/modify entries:
# http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD

find --set-root --ignore-floppies /boot/grub/menu.lst
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

# All your boot are belong to NeoSmart!
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /boot/grub/menu.lst
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

# All your boot are belong to NeoSmart!
find --set-root --ignore-floppies /boot/grub/menu.lst
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

# All your boot are belong to NeoSmart!

None of which looks to me particularly useful!

It may or may not be relevant, but in playing around with EasyBCD I've set up NeoGrub as well as Linux. The NeoGrub boot-up menu option appears to work ok: it comes up with grub> prompt and grub>help gives a list of commands.

I don't know where to go from here.
Tony

[davesurrey]

If you have installed Puppy 431 to sda3 then try adding to the menu.lst the following at the end.

[ICPUG]

As author of Lin'N'Win I can confirm it does not work with Vista or Windows 7. I have not written instructions for those OS because I did not have a machine to test them on.

My recommended way to go is with EasyBCD (to edit Windows 7 boot file) and neogrub to provide a Linux bootloader.

neogrub is essentially grldr used by the Lin'N'Win project but installed in its own folder, rather than having to be put in \ as is the case with grldr.

Once you have these set up it should simply be a matter of adding a stub for your menu.lst file which will boot Puppy. The stub as identified in the Lin'N'Win project instructions here:
http://www.icpug.org.uk/national/linnwin/step4-puppy431.htm
should work. Please modify for your specific hardware and puppy folder.

[davesurrey]

Thanks ICPUG for confirming that. I thought it was the case but needed to be sure.
Dave

[yorkiesnorkie]

It occurs to me that most of the problems encountered with GRUB and/or other bootloaders are when people try to keep their old OS for the purpose of dual booting. I sympathize.

Your Acer will most likely have (under the windows OS) the capability to make a set of recovery DVDs/CDs for the purpose of re-installing the machine to its factory state. It would be prudent for you to take a look at that task and get that done before messing about too much.

Yorkiesnorkie

[yorkiesnorkie]

[davesurrey]

yorkiesnorkie wrote

[Philh]

This is how I did it on a computer with windows7

Using Easybcd beta 2.0.0.76(latest at the time)
Add new entry Linux/BSD
Select Grub legacy

Make a directory C:/boot/grub for the menu.lst

With Puppy files in c:/ sda3 on this pc

title Puppy431seamonkey usepupsavefile acpi this is bootgrubmenu on sda3
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
kernel (hd0,2)/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,2)/initrd.gz

title Puppy431seamonkey nopupsavefile firstrun acpi
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
kernel (hd0,2)/vmlinuz pfix=ram
initrd (hd0,2)/initrd.gz