REQUEST and DISCUSSION: BT5R3 and Windows 7 Dual-Boot

[TheOnion]

Hi all you pros out there =)

Okkies I think it may seem the "whole world" is having issues with dual-booting with Windows 7.

Windows 7
Backtrack5 R3 KDE x64

All options given by the installation wizard of Backtrack don't seem to be able to work. I mean installation is all fine but it is the booting into BT that is the issue

Options given are "side-by-side", "use entire disk", "use next empty space" and of course "specify partitions manually"...

Side-by-side installation actually wont have any effect on the booting up of Windows 7.
WinXP is all fine and lovely. For WinXP, GRUB will take over the boot loader. "suspicion is that WinXP has boot.ini and Windows 7 no longer has this file".

So for windows 7, it seems that GRUB could not "take over" the boot loader, so to speak. As it will simply boot into windows upon restart
Linuxbsdos.com has used EasyBCD for dual-booting BT5R2 with Windows 7 which I have tried to use for BT5R3 dual-booting.
BT5R3 actually gets listed in a "boot-selection-screen"

BUT!!
When i attempt to boot BackTrack from there onwards, the response i got was BT is missing or corrupted.
*Windows is still fine by the way, i can still boot windows*

So what I did next was to use EasyBCD to spam entries for each and every possible /dev/sda's to see if the boot loader GRUB could be "detected" from the different "partitions".
NOTE: "side-by-side installation by default will install BT's boot loader to /dev/sda..period..i think we all know this.

but...sadly it seems there is hardly any tutorials on how to work this around.
Linuxbsdos.com actually told me that he will attempt it over the past weekend, however has not done so. Its ok.

Have anyone of you guys out there managed to dual-boot ANY BT5R3 with Windows 7?
Do let me know and I hope this thread can also serve as a guide for those attempting dual-booting BT5R3 and Win7

[maverik35]

I've done that many many times, and not only Dual, triple, etc..Up to 5 different OS including: WinXP, Win7, BT5r3, Debian, Ubuntu and LMDE in one HDD..

I do not use the term "Okkies I think it may seem the "whole world" is having issues with dual-booting with Windows 7", I don't..So I strongly belive there are few people with dual boot problems...Need to read little more about linux, partitions, Filesystems, partitioning in linux, etc..

How about delivering some info as to: kind of laptop, hardware used, HDD install? UEFI system? ...We cannot understand, or suppose or take for granted anything...Be more specific please..It will help us to know more about your problem and get a more accurate help.

Luck.

[TheOnion]

Heys,

Yeah i been searching like crazy for about quite some time, still there is no click-click method for dual-booting windows.
Have to apologise for that "whole world" statement, guess I was frustrated.

Laptop: Asus K55V
HDD: WesternD Blue 750GB

After the initial trial and errors of resizing partitions etc, i decided to completely reinstall/format windows 7 pro, letting it take up the entire drive as per before.

Since side-by-side worked on WinXP, which is awesome btw, i tried it as my 1st attempt on Win7. Didn't work.
Side-by-side settings were not tampered with and boot loader was supposedly and recommeneded to be installed into /dev/sda, so I didn't change that.

However now that side-by-side is not working, what would your recommended options be?
As of now, my HDD would have a 100MB system-reserved partition for Win7, and another partition which will be of course Win7 altogether.

I've been trying to dig up abit on the partitioning and stuff, which is going to take some time.
And i also have read GRUB/GRUB2 taking over the booting of ANY OS, which i actually prefer.

I believe my past failures must be due to partitioning something not right.
I have also read that many people have problems with booting Windows7 after installing BT5..for me that is no issue. I can always boot windows normally, but not BT.

What would be your guesses? xD

Hi all I am back,
been constantly spam formatting and testing options over and over again.

So what I have done are these:

I use GParted to do my partitioning
Disabling UEFI to boot laptop into "BIOS mode"---> BT5R3/GParted CANNOT see/detect any Win7 partitions
Enabling UEFI---> BT5R3 can detect my windows 7 partitions but installing BT5 and all the necessary will not simply "boot" BT upon selection (I had to use EasyBCD to make BT appear)

There have been some suggested solutions to both UEFI and non-UEFI.
However, for those who are happily dual-booting WIn7 x64 and BT5R3 KDE x64 and with UEFI-capable mobos,
could I request for some advice on how you all did it?

And since UEFI is here to stay, is either there is a workaround, or we have to wait for the next BT release, hopefully our BT developers can help out in this.
Stupid UEFI =.=