Re: Booting straight into various Windows options from grub

Tony Houghton wrote:
I'm sure I read an article in a Linux magazine years ago which explained
how you could use a Linux bootloader (I expect it was just lilo in those
days, but if it's possible with lilo it should be possible with grub
too) to boot straight into different Windows options instead of having
to press F8 at the right moment to bring up Windows' boot menu after
lilo/grub. Eg if you have different versions of Windows installed or you
want to select Safe Mode etc. I've never been able to find that article
again though.

Does anyone know if that's possible, or must I have been dreaming?

Booting different versions of 'doze is straight forward as far as GRUB is concerned - just add extra menu item definitions as you would for different Linux versions. "info grub" tells all.

Caveat: what follows is something I last did when upgrading from Win 3.11 to Win 95. back in '96 - thinks may have changed since then in the MS world. Here's the situation at that time:

Installing different versions of 'doze is not straight forward because Windows can only be installed in a primary partition. The catch is the Windows partitioning program. 'fdisk' only permits one active partition per disk and refuses point blank to create an active primary partition if there's one on any other disk that's visible to the BIOS. I suspect that the same applies to the installer, which may get confused or accuse you of piracy if it sees more than one disk with an active primary partition.

It can be done, but you need to put each primary partition on a different disk and make sure that all other disks containing active primary partitions are unplugged while you partition and format the next disk and install Windows on it. As far as MS is concerned this is an undocumented process. I did the above after considerable frustration: took out the Win 3.11 disk while I installed '95 on a new disk. When that was complete I could insert the original disk as IDE slave (the '95 disk was master). The PC then booted into '95 (no option to boot into 3.11 was offered) and pull stuff across from the old disk before finally removing it.

A straight dual boot (Linux + 'doze) PC is much easier to set up provided you install Windows first.

Can't help with booting into safe mode: sorry.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
.

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