Multi-boot: Making windows partitions bootable?

Daniel B. Thurman dant at cdkkt.com
Fri Nov 20 20:35:59 UTC 2009


I have been able to make a multiboot windows disk, no
problems, but I am trying to make a windows backup onto
another drive and make it bootable.  Perhaps this is related to
the 32bit (137GB) boundary problem?

On a different system,  I have a successful multiboot drive as follows:
[mb][bb][sw][[Xp][Vis][bf9][rf9][bf11][rf11][bu9][ru9][bs][rs][wa][fa]]

mb = master boot
bb = backup boot
sw = swap
Xp = Windows XP
Vis = Windows Vista
bf9 = boot Fedora 9
rf9 = root Fedora 9
bf11 = boot Fedora 11
rf11 = root Fedora 11
bu9 = boot Ubuntu 9
ru9 = root Ubuntu 9
bs = boot spare
rs = root spare
wa = Windows Apps
fa = Fedora Apps

Notice that the max of 15 partitions are all used up (for SATA)
Also notice that the windows partitions are placed within the
137GB boundary.

For my current system, here is what I have:

Disk1:
[w2kp][Xp][Vis][mb][wa]]

w2kp = Windows 2000 Professional
Xp = Windows XP
Vis = Windows Vista
mb = Grub boot partition
wa = Windows Applications

Disk2:
[mb][bb][sw][[bf9][rf9][bf11][rf11][bu9][ru9][bs][rs][Xp][Vis][fa][wa]]

Notice that the windows partitions are outside the 137GB boundary.
The reason is, that disk-2 was previously all linux-distros only disk
and I realized later I did not have backup windows partitions and
decided to use the spares after the fact.

My goal is to copy the contents of drive1:Xp to drive2:Xp and
drive1:Vis to drive2:Vis and to make drive2:Xp and drive2:Vis
bootable after copying the data over.

This is what I did as for "backups":

1) mkdir /mnt/{a,b}
2) mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/a
3) mount /dev/sdb12 /mnt/b
4) cd /mnt/b; rsync -av /mnt/a/. /mnt/b/.
Repeat the above steps for Vista but with the right partitions

The difficulty I am having is making the respective windows
partitions bootable.

I tried:

1) Disk2: Set the partition boot flag (Using gparted) on Xp (and later 
Vista)
    This makes the Xp partition C: drive so that repairs might
    be successful.
2) Reboot with the CD/DVD inserted and if successful, use the "fixMBR"
    utility file.

The problem here, is that for both Xp & Vista, the CD/DVD program fails to
locate their respective partitions from which to launch windows and simply
stops.  The question is, does that mean that both Xp & Vista 
installation program
stops because it is outside the 137GB boundary, long before partition 12/13?

Is there another way to make partitions bootable other than using
Windows installation CD/DVD/floppies?

Thanks-
Dan




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