I've got a laptop with two partitions, hda 1 and hda2. The former has Windows 2000, the later Linux. GRUB is installed on the second partition in ./boot. The second partition is set with the boot flag.

GRUB boots up, then I select Win2k. Every time I run windows, it sets hda1 as the boot partition, basically killing GRUB. I then have to go get a GParted live cd or something to set hda2 as the boot partition again.

What can I do to fix this?

6/3/2009 5:32:23 PM

use the windows recovery environment to unset hda1 as an active boot partition, and set hda2 as active.

6/3/2009 6:03:42 PM

Every time I run windows?

The menu.1st grub config file runs "makeactive" when you select windows, but I always thought that was necessary.

6/3/2009 6:09:19 PM

Any other ideas?

6/4/2009 3:24:28 PM

Your problem is that you've got two boot managers on two separate drives for no apparent reason, dude.


Install GRUB in the boot partition on hda1 and make it the primary boot drive and you'll be fine. You can adjust which OS loads (I'm assuming you want Linux) as the default via GRUB itself.

[Edited on June 4, 2009 at 3:38 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2009 3:35:36 PM

I was using vague terminology. Both partitions are on the same hard drive. hd(0,0) is windows, hd(0,1) is linux and is the boot partition. And since this is a laptop, they're labeled sda1 and sda2.

The problem was "makeactive" in the GRUB menu.1st file. Modern versions of windows don't need it, apparently, and I was changing the boot flag every time I chose windows. Every grub config example I found online had it, so I typed it.

I wanted to keep GRUB out of the MBR for antivirus reasons.
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Also, this is puppy linux, which I've installed from live cd. The kernel, root filesystem and swap are all on the same partition. Works great and boots fast. What is the downside to everything together like this?

Actually, I may not have any swap space at all. Not sure. Would it be listed in under the /root filestructure?

[Edited on June 4, 2009 at 6:38 PM. Reason : .]

6/4/2009 6:20:36 PM

Added ram to 256MB and repartitioned a 512 swap partition(which I haven't seen it use yet, but it's there). Boot time is now 50 seconds. Not great, but good enough I guess. The fresh Win2k install takes around 4 minutes to boot.

I don't see any big places to trim the boot time(very important for my use). If anything, starting X seems to take longest. The modules all load in <5secs, the usb/pcmcia checks are bypassed except for the two I need. There's got to be a way to get this down to 30 seconds.

6/4/2009 11:37:30 PM