Linux Mint Forums

/dev/hda23

??
A warning - you can't change this setup to SATA. There the max number of partitions is 15
The method seems to me to be a bit elaborated....

catmother,

You could use a dedicated boot partition, I prefer grub, to hide partitions and boot all but the Windows install. The Windows boot loader could hand off to the grub partition and you could select the other installs from there.

The problem I see with the whole thing though is why go through all the gymnastics just to use some part of the Windows boot loader? I see it is an academic exercise with little practical value. But maybe I am missing something.

Fred

catmother,

You might know that as soon as I said I didn't see much of a practical application for this, I would run across a situation where this might be useful.

In the thread below your suggestion of booting from the Windows boot loader may be the best solution and just what the doctor ordered.

http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 46&t=11709

It would be nice if you could drop-in and share a solution to his problem with him.

Fred

Well, every time I install any distro of Linux (I distro hop a lot) the Windows partition appears on the menu automatically and boots fine.

I didn't know there were problems with using GRUB.

Most distributions detect a Windows partition fine and add an entry for that in GRUB, but some has issues detecting other Linux installations, for some reason. But using the XP bootloader could be useful for people who want to keep a recovery partition or similar, as they usually rely on the XP bootloader to function properly.

And I can see the use for people with Toshiba laptops as it has been reported that the BIOS detects if the MBR has been changed and change it back so nothing but Vista can boot