Manoj Joseph wrote: > Moinak Ghosh wrote: > >> Manoj Joseph wrote: >> >>> Moinak Ghosh wrote: >>> >>> >>>> Vista has 2 hard requirements in order to boot. The MBR "must" have >>>> the Vista bootloader. The Vista partition "must" be marked as active. >>>> In fact Vista won't even install if the Windows partition is not >>>> active. Typically the scenario if one has been dual-booting Solaris >>>> and WinXP. >>>> Some partition managers tend to put their own bootloader in the MBR. >>>> >>>> >>> I doubt if this is true. I dual boot between Vista and Linux using grub. >>> I have done nothing special to get it to work. >>> >>> >> Are you using the Vista beta or release candidate ? These restrictions >> were added quite late in the release cycle. I guess the FCS version has >> these. >> > > I am using neither the beta nor the RC. It is the real thing. ;) FCS > with the latest updates. >
Not sure what is going on here but definitely confusing. I faced problems while installing if the Windows partition was not marked active, it will just say no suitable volume for installing Windows! Mark it as active in gparted and install worked. Trying to multiboot with Solaris Express with Grub being loaded from MBR caused bootup error from Windows: winload.exe... is missing or corrupt Recovering the backed up MBR caused Windows to boot fine and I then used the bcdedit.exe tool. I can hazard a guess however. The Vista bootmgr (it is no longer ntldr) checks a disk signature in the MBR which is stored after the boot code. This signature is matched with the signature derived from a GUID in the BCD (Boot Configuration Data) store (no more boot.ini). Now if just the boot code is overwritten without overwriting the full MBR, then the signature is preserved letting Vista to boot even though we may have Grub in the MBR. installgrub in Solaris overwrites the whole sector which would destroy the disk signature. Microsoft in fact is recommending OEMs not to hook their custom bootloaders and recovery code in the MBR. See here for more details: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/mbr.html Regards, Moinak. > -Manoj > _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
