Dual Boot on eeepc

[Lanz]

Hi

I've installed XP on the SSD disk and I've installed Backtrack V3 linux on the SDcard.

This all works fine, but I have to use the bios to choose which drive to boot from.

What's the simpliest bootloader thing I can install that will give me the option of which OS to boot from without going into the bios each time??

cheers

 

[BigBoy]

have a google for GAG boot manager. should do what you want with ease and lots of options, also the linux operating system should have Grub or Lilo as the boot manager and should be able to operate both OS's.

 

[.walls]

I vote GRUB.

boot into linux and open a shell. su to root and type grub. that will drop you into the grub shell (which is a bit like bash, but nowhere near as sophisticated and doesn't use the same commands). In grub, type

geometry (hd0)
geometry (hd1)

compare the disks to see if grub is picking them up in the correct order (the disks will have to be different sizes for this to be easy....)

root (hd0,0)

(it should tell you the partition type - most likely ext2 or another linux fs type... if it says unknown type, then the disk is probably wrong - but shouldn't be)

setup (hd0)

(it should now tell you a few things, but at the bottom, it should say something like "installed")

quit
vi (or your editor of choice) /boot/grub/menu.lst

[add the following lines to the bottom of your menu.lst]

# (1) Windows ----> this line is optional, as it's a comment...
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
makeactive

reboot.

Leave the boot order the way it was. You should now have a dual boot system.

N.B. GRUB recognizes disks by their BIOS order (and some BIOSes make this very difficult) e.g. (HD0) is the first disk (HD0,0) is the first partition on the first disk, (HD1) is the second disk, etc.