Windows 7 & F10 dual-boot single drive - HOW???

[rockstarr]

After going back & forth between win7b & F10 installs, I can't get both to live on the same hard disk for dual booting anymore. win7 complains about fedora's GPT disk being unacceptable for installation. win7 blows away fedora's GPT partitions when it installs. Fedora doesn't recognize win7 partitions when it installs. I can't specify exact partition boundaries with windows even if I know what they are, and I can't seem to find any info how to do it in parted either. I have win7 installed in partition 3 in a known location on disk, but if I reinstall f10 (again), it's going to blow away the win7 boot data on the disk. How do I tell grub where to find the chainloader thingy? Can that still even be used? win7 no longer uses ntldr, and I haven't found an updated procedure for this new boot method.

Thanks guys

[tho.mei]

Hallo

what are you use Windwz 7 for? Does F10 you not support well? Ask this question a Win-Forum. I's sure nor a problem of Fedora...

OK, finally I'll answer you serious: (Sorry, but I had to... )

Windowz 7 uses a deterrent bootlader, but on a dual boot configuration it works the same as with XP or win2k.

My experience: It works the best if you crate participations with a linux-live-CD or the rescue system of the Fedora-CD. Use good old fdisk to do it. Create a big ext3-partition a swap and a big NTFS-partition. You can change the FS-type with t. Save the partition-table with w. Reboot and install Windowz. Choose only the partition. Do not edit the partitions again in the installer again. Then install Fedora. Also only tell the installer the mount-point: / Do not edit the partition-table again.

If it will not work... just trash Windwoz for ever!
see: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=54240

[dkd903]

Originally Posted by tho.mei

................................o not edit the partitions again in the installer again. Then install Fedora. Also only tell the installer the mount-point: / Do not edit the partition-table again.

If it will not work... just trash Windwoz for ever!
see: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=54240

trashing something is never a solution, dude!

[rockstarr]

Yes! Winblows 7 & Fedora living together in sin on a single drive. It's a crazy mixed up world. Thanks for the suggestions, guys. What I finally had to do was abandon all hope of using a gpt partition table and go with grandpa's old school dos partition table. after I retrieved the exact offset locations of the partitions from windows diskpart utility, I reentered the partitions from scratch with parted using those values and msdos label type. Then I "repaired" the windows installation, then I reinstalled grub to the mbr and added the chainloader option for windows. For some reason, linux is all hung up on using gpt for default installation, but apparently it's totally useless without an efi enabled board, which I don't have, even though it's a brand spanking new asus.

[dkd903]

boot in thru the live cd and fix grub, then you just need to map your windows 7 boot drive to the drive where your boot loader is located... add following to grub.conf

title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,0) #for /dev/sda1 where my Win7 boot files r located, win7 installed in /dev/sda3
map (hd0,0) (hd0,2) #map <win7 bootloader drive> <win7 install drive>
map (hd0,2) (hd0,0) #map <win7 install drive> <win7 bootloader drive>
makeactive
chainloader +1