On 08/20/2012 09:31 AM, Conan Doyle wrote:
After numerous searches on how to setup CentOS 6.3 and Win7 to dual boot
I turn to the readers of this forum for help...
I suppose my question is quite simple:
What is the correct way to set up a dual boot system for CentOS 6.3, or
SL 6.3, and Windows 7?
I have tried several times, with several variations, but run into the
same problem: After installing Win7, then CentOS, the machine boots
straight into Win7 and no grub menu appears...
I have a pretty new system that I built in Nov 2012: i5-2500K, Gigabyte
GA-Z68XP-UD3 mobo, 8GB RAM, eVGA NVIDIA GTX 560 card, and two 1 TB SATA
drives.
My first attempt was to install Win7 on drive 0 then install CentOS on
drive 1, with grub installed in the /boot partition which was on
/dev/sdb1. Apparently there were some issues with this due to Win7,
UEFI, etc. I didn't really understand all these problems so I tried again.
My second attempt was to try to disable the EFI stuff in BIOS and
install WinXP, then install Win7 over this to avoid the system restore
partition, and EFI issues etc. then install CentOS over this, again
installing grub to /boot, which was /dev/sdb1.
I noticed the default location for grub was /dev/sda, which is the
windows disk... Would this not hose up the windows install?
I believe your problem is right here. Both of your previous
descriptions installed the boot loader to a partition on the second
disk. Most BIOS will boot from the first MBR it finds. This is
typically the MBR of disk 0.
Your first attempt looked good, but you needed to install the boot
loader for CentOS (SL, TUV, etc) to /dev/sda (notice no partition). If
the installer doesn't catch it, you will have to manually add in a chain
loader for Win7 to the grub menu. This is a quick text file editing.
Examples can be found doing a web search along the lines of 'grub
windows 7 boot entry'.
A typical dual boot should install Windows _first_, then any linux
distributions. This allows the later boot loaders to locate and add
entries for the previous operating systems if possible. The Windows
loader can be a pain to get other operating systems (such as linux) to
work, but it is possible. You'd have to extract the linux boot loader
from the disk into a file, put it on the windows partition, and manually
add entries to the NTLDR configuration. At least, that is how it was
many years ago when I did it with NT4 and using lilo.
I have set up Windows/CentOS dual booting before, but not on this
machine, and not with CentOS 6.3. Any help would be appreciated more
than you can imagine...
I have been a CentOS user for a while, but I am intrigued by SL, and
would definitely jump ship to SL if I can get it dual booting with Win7...
Ed
--
Mr. Mark V. Stodola
Senior Control Systems Engineer
National Electrostatics Corp.
P.O. Box 620310
Middleton, WI 53562-0310 USA
Phone: (608) 831-7600
Fax: (608) 831-9591
