Booting into linux from Windows Vista Boot Manager

I was wondering if anyone is currently booting linux from their windows boot manager?

I would like to get some idea as to the stability of doing things that way as opposed to writing Grub to the MBR.

I was doing it that way but just recently learned how to boot into linux through the windows boot manager. I also go through a dedicated boot partition on sda6 and can also get back to the windows menu from linux.

I have been experimenting with EasyBCD, Visual BCD Editor, Vista-bootPro, bcdedit,MBRfix and others to try and get a handle on the best route to recovery when the onknown strikes!

Any thoughts on the subject would be appreciated, thanks.

Windows 7/Vista boot environment is more rigid and with less capabilities than that of GRUB.

There is the requirement of placing Windows boot related files on a primary and active partition. GRUB can be placed on extended logical partition.

Repairing Windows 7/Vista booting always involves writes of Windows MBR to disk so having a Linux/GRUB MBR there is not a very good idea. Repairing GRUB does not necessarily mean writes to MBR on disk !


To summarize when having Windows and Linux dual-boot:
1) always use a Windows MBR and Windows boot manager as base to be able to quickly repair Windows booting.
2) boot GRUB2/GRUB based LInux versions over a Windows boot sector loader giving as parameter boot image file "boot.img" or "stage1" from /boot/grub2 or /boot/grub directory.

Though I agree with the previous poster that grub is a better boot loader option for dual boot. He didn't really answer your question.
here is a page that give step by step instructions on how to do what you asked.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/ar...thor-aspx.aspx

Also an alternative to either plan is EasyBCD found here http://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/
Good Luck , Let us know how you make out.

I don't agree on post above in the part EasyBCD as it introduces third party boot manager - neogrub or whatever for booting Linux based OS.

Having Windows bootmgr and GRUB/GRUB2 is enough for dual-booting Windows and Linux/Ubuntu. There is no need of third party boot managers !

From Windows any "foreign" system can be booted over a so called "boot sector loader".
The boot sector loader needs a copy of the partition boot record of the "foreign" system.

The partition boot record for GRUB is /boot/grub/stage1.
The partition boot record for GRUB2 is /boot/grub2/boot.img.
No need for extracting boot sector with dd.

The link posted above seems to be popular in Google for dual booting Linux from Vista/Windows 7.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by darkomano

I don't agree on post above in the part EasyBCD as it introduces third party boot manager - neogrub or whatever for booting Linux based OS.

Having Windows bootmgr and GRUB/GRUB2 is enough for dual-booting Windows and Linux/Ubuntu. There is no need of third party boot managers !

From Windows any "foreign" system can be booted over a so called "boot sector loader".
The boot sector loader needs a copy of the partition boot record of the "foreign" system.

The partition boot record for GRUB is /boot/grub/stage1.
The partition boot record for GRUB2 is /boot/grub2/boot.img.
No need for extracting boot sector with dd.

The link posted above seems to be popular in Google for dual booting Linux from Vista/Windows 7.

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I'm not saying that I use or even would use easyBCD but was just showing the options available , my choice has always been grub or lilo they work fine for what I'm doing , Those running bsd O.S. however may dis agree with your assessment of easyBCD. Just a thought :)

For FreeBSD the file is "/boot/boot1"
The utility "ufs2tool - ufs for Windows" gives read access to a BSD partition.
Unix descendants need a primary partition ;)