Vista 64 and bootloader headache

I finally got around to installing Linux to dual boot my desktop. I tried to do it last year but the X-fi drivers for my sound card weren't out / ready. So I was shopping around for a good distro for using in my Linux courses at my college. My first pick was going to be Fedora but it seemed like the boot loader didn't want to install properly under Vista 64 Business after 2 or 3 tries. Then I decided to try OpenSUSE, it seemed like it was going to install fine after showing it was going to install under the MBR of all 3 of my Vista drives (I have 3 HDD I use for storing Vista, I installed a 4th small 30GB drive for Linux). OpenSUSE gave a error when it came to installing the bootloader, it didn't say exactly what it was or a code to look it up, just sent me to a menu showing where it would install the bootloader.

My most recent experiment was with Linux Mint and it failed also, I believe it didn't even see my Vista installation because it didn't say a thing about recognizing a windows installation. I'd prefer to install a Red Hat like distro for class work, so I would be used to configuring those systems. I know about CentOS but from the documents I was reading about Red Hat, Fedora is more up to date and more desktop suitable and Red Hat is more stable with less packages.

I feel kinda weird about asking for dual boot help, but I think my system is probably special because of all the hard drives I have. I also did something to one of them recently that I'm not sure could of messed things up. I tried to using Swissknife in the Ultimate Boot CD and it did some weird things to my D drive, the drive shows as full previously un split space but 80GBs show up as my G drive. It doesn't show up in Linux since I'm using a totally different drive but maybe it would be throwing off the boot loader install somehow.

Thanks for any help, I did a dual boot on my laptop but I installed Vista 32 just before I installed Linux. The laptop only had one drive too, so that made it easy.

 

Maybe repairing Vista's MBR would help? Seems like Fedora could have messed it up.

 

I don't understand your drive configuration. How many drives do you have and what partitions? Do you know which partition has Windows on it? Why don't you run a live cd, go to a terminal and type (enter your password when asked for it):

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

This will list all the drives and the partitions and will atleast tell you if Linux sees what it should be seeing. One of the partitions should have windows on it(one that says NTFS under the system column). I don't know what this Swissknife program is that you mention, but does it have an option of restoring the Windows bootloader back to default?

 

I think Tailic is right, something going wrong with your MBR.

You may realize this already, but my desktop has 2 HDDs. One with XP/Ubuntu and the other with Vista. Instead of trying to get one boot loader to control them all, I just use the BIOS. So when I reboot, if I want Vista, I select that HDD to load first.
It's kind of a pain, but since I rarely boot Vista (I'll probably just rip that hdd out sooner or later), it works. Maybe another option if you can't get grub to work right.

 

I ended up doing the same thing as that now, I decided to install ubuntu to see if it would be able to get up and running, I thought it had it but but selecting Vista would just give a NTLDR missing, which is Vista's MBR. So I guess it's best to partition your main HDD with Vista first and install part of Ubuntu on it if you want to dual boot easily.

I also noticed that Creative's X-Fi drivers are still pretty crappy, if you install the newest kernel it wont install them. It seems like you have to have the kernel the drivers were made for.

 

you can integrate grub into vista' s bootloader with easybcd. the process is explained in the wiki in detail.

 

Close... but no cookie

Anyways, even after telling it to install the bootloader on the Linux partition it hangs when restarting from Vista into Linux. The part it hangs at is "loading new partition" along with "bootsector from C.H. Hockstatter".

I'm gonna keep on it but I think it has to do with Vista being 64 bit rather then 32 bit, my laptop wasn't a little prick like my desktop is and my laptop is running Vista 32. I'm also running Fedora 64 now and I don't think it has to do with the distro because I tried both 32 and 64 bit versions of other distros.

Gotta spend some time reading the NeoSmart forums I guess.

 

i followed the instructions at the wiki and i was able to get vista 64 bit and ubuntu to coexist. is there any chance grub might be looking for your distro on the wrong partition?