- Windows XP
- Windows 7
- Ubuntu 10.10 Netbook edition
- Acronis 2011 recovery ISO
- LENOVO preinstalled recovery environment
- Grub4DOS command line shell
I built this setup using Ubuntu's Grub2 & Grub4DOS 0.4.5b. What I did was, I installed Grub2 on the MBR. So, it used to take over the control of the booting process from the system startup. I modified it's /boot/grub/grub.cfg file with the entries below:
menuentry "Windows XP Professional"{ set root=(hd0,11) linux16 /Rescue/grub4dos-0.4.5b/grub.exe --config-file="root (hd0,0);chainloader /ntldr" } menuentry "Windows 7 Ultimate"{ set root=(hd0,11) linux16 /Rescue/grub4dos-0.4.5b/grub.exe --config-file="root (hd0,0);chainloader /bootmgr" } menuentry "Acronis TrueImage 2011 Home Edition"{ set root=(hd0,11) linux16 /Rescue/grub4dos-0.4.5b/grub.exe --config-file="root (hd0,10);map --mem /Rescue/Acronis-2011.iso (0xff);map --hook;chainloader (0xff)" } menuentry "Grub4DOS"{ set root=(hd0,11) linux16 /Rescue/grub4dos-0.4.5b/grub.exe --config-file="(hd0,10)/Rescue/grub4dos-0.4.5b/menu.lst" }
So, basically you can see that it's a mere chainloading of Grub4DOS from Grub2 & every single option used to work fine. Here is a relevant text extracted from the README of the Grub4DOS version I'm using:
Update: FILE can be the contents of a menu. Use semi-colon
to delimitate the embedded commands here in FILE. The FILE
can be enclosed with a pair of double-quotes. For example:
GRUB --config-file="root (hd0,0);chainloader +1"
This command will boot the system in (hd0,0).
Another example:
GRUB --config-file="reboot"
This command will reboot the machine.
One more example:
GRUB --config-file="halt"
This command will halt the machine.
But alas, since yesterday, the setup stopped working. Naturally what comes up in mind that what has this guy done with the setup? The small amount of fiddling I've done with my system is to just overwrite the Ubuntu 10.10 installation with Zorin OS, an Ubuntu derivative which also employs Grub2 as it's bootloader. I added the same entries as mentioned above to the grub.cfg file, but this time choosing any of my "custom" options is dropping me to the Grub4DOS commandline shell itself. The behavior is the sane when "no" --config-file parameter is passed to Grub4DOS via Grub2. This has made me believe that for *some* the arguments are not being passed properly. But what has made me astonished that the menu entries are well tested & fully working since last eight months at lest. Still I'm scratching my head. You'll feel pity on me if you hear that I'm booting into my Windows by typing
from the Grub4DOS commandline every time. BTW, it is not my aim to boot my system by any means but to get it working by chainloading Grub4DOS from Grub2. Any ideas?chainloader (hd0,0)/ntldr
boot