Installing DualBoot - BackTrack and WinXP with 5 Primary Partitions

[The_Denv]

Hey everyone, I was browsing the current help/tutorial files here and none of them solved my problems, so I had to do it myself. I encountered a LOT of "Missing or Corrupt hal.dll", Black screen with blinking white cursor on the upper left hand corner with no error code and also an error when I loaded Back|Track from boot I got a GRUB prompt.

This guide below went through all the major Grub/Win/Dual errors with success. This guide will get ANYONE running Back|Track and XP with 5 partitions. Someone on this forum called 'Dude' said I cant have 5 partitions, BUT I DO and IT WORKS!

Another thing, this forum is in php and like most forums the layout of a text dump gets a rearranged structure and this guide is really LONG, but works and ITS VERY EASY [even though it took me 5 days to figure everything out you can do this is in a few hours]. I originally uploaded THE TUTORIAL on my gopher site because the computer I run at the moment finds modern software a real bitch and I have to use Lynx, bboard, com, pine and gopher as means of communication.

Here is the URL for the Tutorial/Guide:

http://gopher.floodgap.com/gopher/gw...rack+and+WinXP

[hobbes]

This is a good guide to using the windows bootloader to bring up the grub bootloader which in turn loads Back|Track. Interesting solution you've come up with here.

[The_Denv]

Thanks hobbes for your compliment, it's much appreciated

[nordland]

Hi The_Denv

Thank you, this is probably exactly what I'm looking for! I have a full disk encryption program (drive crypt plus pack) for my C: and winXP. This has to be opened on boot in the MBR.

Anyway, I'm a total N00b and I did my best to follow your guide, and I didn't get it to work yet. There are some parts I have difficulties with, hopefully you will find the time to bring me some light.

So number 1. would be this part:

----------

$ grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/sda7 /dev/sda7

Add the folloing text and save (CTRL+X >> Press 'Y' >> Hit 'ENTER'
Then exit it, it might show some wierd error like: Uknown dir or
something...just continue to exit.

timeout=4
title Slax
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sda7 vga=791 rw

----------

When I read further in the guide I get a nano command that looks a bit similar to this situation? Could there be one line missing in the guide here?



Number 2.

----------

$ dd if=/dev/sda7 of=/mnt/sda5/backtrack.mbr bs=512 count=1

----------

my fat32 is a different size, I guess I should change th bs=512 to bs= 42235 in my case (42 gig) and "count=1" I just leave as it is (cos I dont know better). Could this be correct?



Number 3.

----------

$ nano /mnt/hda4/boot/grub/menu.lst

I then added this text:


timeout=4
title Slax
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sda7 vga=normal rw

----------

I'm confused here cos I don't know how to replace your hda4, is that your swap disk?


I think if I had more info on these three Q's my chances are better to get it running.

Looking forward to this, thanks a lot, again!

All the best,

Carl

[The_Denv]

<snip>

Hi The_Denv

Thank you, this is probably exactly what I'm looking for! I have a full disk encryption program (drive crypt plus pack) for my C: and winXP. This has to be opened on boot in the MBR...

Yeh man, I got your email and I modified my tutorial. Thanks for spotting the flaws in it. I didnt get someone else to overview and spellcheck/grammar check it plus I always enjoy a toke when Im on my computer so I do make a few mistakes now and again.

Anyway, cheers for spotting that out. The problem is now solved, fixed and re-published on the same URL as I primarily posted.

Good Luck!

EDIT: Sorry, I just looked at the date that you posted this. Sorry about the time I have been busy.

[The_Denv]

*Bump
I had to bump it becaus eof my mates finding it hard to find it here]

[Jhonnie]

Thanks, your tutorial might be very helpful solving my multiboot (bootmanager) problem. I use safeboot drive-encryption which claims the MBR. This means no other bootmanager than the windows bootmanager can be put in the MBR. I used the same trick of copying the bootsector of the Ubuntu partition to c:\ and modify boot.ini.

BTW, in your tutorial you name the backtrack bootsector 'MBR'. A harddisk has 1 Masterbootsector, which is located at the first sector of the entire harddisk (active partition). The first sectors of the other bootable partitions are called 'bootsector' (BS), not MBR.

[ExitOnly@]

Many many thanks for your great guide! It has proved SUPERIOR compared with any other dual boot, really...

Only problems were
$ cp /boot/boot/vmlinuz /mnt/sda7/boot
to
$ cp /boot/vmlinuz /mnt/sda7/boot

and
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sda7 vga=791 rw
to
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sda7 vga=791 ro

, otherwise I have it in a semi-auto-install-script (changed my /dev/sdax).

No more crying "Windows rewrote my mbr" or "I lost Windows and BT". That was a mans job to do. Thanks again.

[andy1]

Hey just wondering if this is a floodgap problem or something else but when I click on the link I get a gopher/floodgap proxy error

is there an alternate link for this tutorial??

cheers

[linuxbeast]

Could someone explain what goes in the "Source (BackTrack CD)" field of the stupid gui? I'm trying to do an install to usb flash drive. Thans.