Fedora and reinstalling Windows

[Mike McCarty]

ethericalzen at gmail.com wrote:
> On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:51:00 -0600
> Mike McCarty <Mike.McCarty at sbcglobal.net> took out a #2 pencil and
> scribbled:
> 
> 
>>Grumpy_Penguin wrote:
>>
>>>On Tuesday 05 December 2006 14:59, Arghavan Sabahi wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi,
>>>> Some time ago I installed Fedora Core 4 on my PC with your
>>>>great help.
>>>>Everything was fine until when I decided to reinstall Windows
>>>>XP. I formated the two partitions which were for windows' use
>>>>and reinstalled it.
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>
>>>This is a famous W$ problem/feature. The installation of
>>>windows overwrites the master boot record.
>>>If windows is installed first then install linux ...Then lilo
>>>or grub is smart enough to recognize the other operating
>>>system...windows ain't that smart
>>
>>This is untrue. I have a machine which is dual-boot Windows XP and
>>Fedora Core. I use the Windows XP boot manager to boot Fedora (via
>>GRUB).
>>
>>[snip]
>>
>>Mike
> 
> 
> But did you install Windows first or Linux (any flavor) first?
> Because Widnows (as far as I have ever experienced) overwrites the
> boot sector. You can of course use the Windows Boot manager to boot
> linux as I have done this before, but you must install Windows
> first and then your flavor os linux.

The machine came with Windows installed. I installed Linux,
and overwrote the MBR with GRUB, which then was unable to boot
Windows. I then used the Windows rescue disc to rewrite the
MBR with the Windows MBR, and use the Windows boot manager
to boot GRUB from a file in the NTFS partition.

The reason GRUB is unable to boot Windows is that this machine
has "corruption detection" (quotes definitely necessary) and
wanted to enter "recovery mode" when GRUB was in the MBR. So
attempting to boot Windows from GRUB in the MBR resulted in
undesirable activity :-)

> Is this not correct? I've never experienced it any other way.

If I understand your question, it is not correct. I use the
Windows MBR to boot the Windows boot manager, which then boots GRUB.

One issue here is that I hear that Windows likes to be on the
first bootable partition. I haven't checked that. So that might
be a concern. If that is what you are referring to, then you
may be correct. I don't know.

But I am definitely using all Microsoft product to manage initial boot
(after the BIOS relinquishes control, that is).

Mike
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