Dual Boot Linpus and XP - Idiots' Guide

Just to deliver this to a potentially wider audience, DJ_Steve and myself, Aresby have created an Idiot's Guide to dual (or even triple) booting your Acer Aspire 110 or 150 and I'm repeating the post in the How To section of this forum.

Idiot's Guide to Dual Booting version 1.0 at http://jargongeneration.com (Just click the Acer Aspire image on the home page).

Supplied with no warranty as to fitness of purpose, and E&OE of course. DJ_Steve responsible for vast majority of content, I'm just making it looker a bit prettier and adding my own tuppence worth of experience when I followed his guide!

I made it work on my own Acer AspIre One and happily boot from Linpus to XP with no unresolvable issues. Even solved the hal.dll error along the way!

Any comments or queries you may have just post them on this thread to keep it all tidy (better than PM-ing either me or DJ_Steve).

Good Luck.

 

Hello.

Thanks for this Guide. Nice work. I followed your instructions and everything went fine. But i got one Question. Is there any way to convince GRUB to autoload an OS?

I edited the grub.conf file to "timeout=10". After reboot the menu comes up, but after 10 seconds nothing happens. I have to choose manually. Any idea how to let grub boot the chosen OS automatically?

 

Yes, you have to add in a line into your GRUB conf file that says

default X

where X is the operating system number you have listed (starting from 0).

Thus, if like me, Linpus is your first named operating system, and Windows the second and you want Linpus to load after the timeout, put

default 0

Thanks for the kind words about the guide BTW, glad it helped.

 

Thanks for your reply.

I allready did that before. It doesnt matter if i set "default=1 or 0". Grub marks the chosen entry automatically, but doesnt start. I still have to do it myself.

 

In that case I'm a bit stumped myself. I shall edit my grub.conf file myself because I prefer XP to load automatically. But that will be tomorrow or over the weekend.

Just in case this makes a difference, put default=0 as the first line and timeout=10 on the next line, then have all the OS information following it. I didn't think GRUB cared in which order things were placed but this seems to be an Acer version of it!

 

Tried that, but didnt work.

But i solved it in a different approach. I deinstalled the acer grub via yum and installed a version from the fedora repository. After a "grub-install" and a reboot the auto-selection works now in the bootmenu.

 

Do you fancy writing out in a Dummies step-by-step fashion what you did?

I was a bit suspicious of the version of GRUB installed by Acer (no box, no instructions etc). I suspect it's a really cut down (or really old) version because Acer's users aren't expected to have to use it.

Us dual/triple booters, however, could do with a kosher version of GRUB. I'm not confident enough to replace it by myself (it was bad enough following DJ_Steve's instructions to re-install the Acer version after my dual boot exercise).

Any takers if Splatter665 doesn't take on this task?

 

Ok being a complete computer dunce I thought that this will turn into a complete catastrophy, but what the hell Ill give it a go. :? I got as far as page 2 then the first of what im sure will be many problems that ill anoy you all with hit me. The Gparted-Live zip archive link dosent work, it comes up with a 404 error. As i want to be sure im getting the right thing is there another link to it?

Cheers

 

Yes I was a bit concerned about depending on external links continuing to work. (I'll also check the links in case I made a typo).

What I will do over the next few days is put those files on my web site so if the link doesn't work at least we will have a copy of those files.

Bear with me...

 

Think ive found the same version on google. Ill give it a go when it downloads but its taking 3 and a half hours!

I might have a read through the rest of the link before I cock everything up. :roll:

 

Idiots guide to replace grub?
Well, it was very simple in my case. I can try to recreate what i did, but my english sucks.

1. Enter a console, for example with ALT+F2 and enter "Terminal"
2. Make a Backup of the existing grub.conf, just in case anything bad happens, with cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /home/user
3. To remove the existing grub, type "sudo yum remove grub" and confirm the uninstall with "y"
4. To install the grub from the Fedora repository enter "sudo yum install grub" and confirm the installation with a "y". Maybe yum asks to accept the gpg keys. Confirm this also with a "y"
5. After Installation the new grub has to be installed into the MBR. Do this with "sudo grub-install /dev/sda". Maybe grub will show some errors related to the "/dev/Mapper/*" device. These can be ignored.
6. Just reboot.

In case that everything worked as planed grub comes up, OS Selection and Timeout work as usual and there is no need to keep the Tab-button pressed.

I hope this helps a bit.

 

Yes, I do suggest this quite strongly on my opening page!

If you know what you are doing (and just as importantly) why you are doing it, then you will succeed.

As my old Latin master used to say "Fail to plan, plan to fail".

OK, I didn't have a Latin master, nor did I actually study Latin (tempus fugit) but it's a good truism!

 

Worth doing just for this!

If you are in agreement I'd like to add this to my Idiots' Guide to Dual Booting as an alternative to the standard Acer Grub. I'll have to test it on my system first (always a bit of a risk but I think I would be able to revert to the original grub by using my own article!).

On the subject of keeping the TAB button pressed I have now found that once the (Acer) Grub menu appears, as long as you press the TAB key for at least one second (a long press) then the arrow keys work normally. Previously I was just pressing the TAB key normally (quick peck) and that was not good enough and the arrow keys did nothing but boot me in the first mentioned OS.

Anyway, all this odd behaviour from the ACER grub is reason enough to update it as per your suggestion, IMHO.

 

No Problem. Its a simple instruction and if it helps anyone, just post it on your page.

Btw. If somehing goes wrong, theres no need for panic. If grub refuses to install a new Bootsector because of an error, the MBR is not altered in any way. So you can boot into Linpus as normal. As long as nothing altered the device.map file in the /boot/grub folder and as long as /etc/fstab shows the right Mountpoints, grub should install the new MBR just fine.
In the worst case something has messed up the installation of grub, you can still use your "gparted-grub recovery" guide. It will work without any trouble.
Im still wondering why Acer uses such a strongly restricted grub. Its not even possible to use a menu.lst file for configuration. Well, anyhow. Its solved now

 

When I try to install xp I cant even get as far as the first reboot. I get a blue screen with the error:

Problem detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage..........
..........Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers.........
Technical info:
STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF899963C , 0XC0000034 , 0X000000000 , 0X000000000)


I cant get as far as choosing the partition to install on, and when i eventually do the new partition is coming up as sda3, so ill have to change that later. I can still boot straight into the original linpus even though the guide says i wont be able to - ive checked the boot box in manage flags. Ive also tried 3 xp cd's so thats not the problem. Any ideas whats going wrong?

 

It seems you got to step 10 in the Idiots' guide.

Without DJ_Steve's expert guidance, I would say that there is something wrong with the Flags settings. Once you have set the BOOT flag for the XP partition then the Linpus partition should no longer be bootable (it removes it off one partition when you set it on another) so Linpus would not be able to find the partition it is looking for.

So check your flags again (and make sure you find that elusive APPLY button right down the bottom of that dialog box or you will lose the settings).

If you do this and you can still boot to Linpus (but not to Windows) send DJ_Steve a PM if he hasn't commented on here by then.

Are you using a CD with Windows XP SP2 or later (old plain XP, or just using SP1 may have issues here)?

 

Maybe you are using a plain XP CD. This one has no drivers for the Inte ICH7 SATA Controller included, so it has some Problems initialising the hard disk. Try to slipstream a new XP CD with SP3 and appropriate drivers. You can use nlite for that. But im just guessing

 

checked the flags and only sda3 is boot. The apply button never lights up so i cant click it! didnt think that was a problem when i read step 10 and the settings remain the same each time i go back into it. Linpus still boots up even though the boot box is not checked.

ill try a newer version of xp and see what happens

 

Whilst you're at it, trying getting that sda3 to appear as sda2 as it will save you grief (well, more hassle) later.

When you are in Gparted, what order do the partitions appear?

Should be: first one, Linux, second one XP, third (tiny one) swap. As per my (small) screenshot in the Idiot's guide.

 

Newer version of xp started to load then failed with the hal.dll error. Went back in on gparted and the partitions have changed all on their own........spooky. They all now appear as per your screen shot.

Anyway its gone completely tits up now. Cant boot Linpus and xp has still got the error. time to start again??????