After I’d decided which operating systems to install, it was time to get to the dirty work of actually installing them. Seeing as I had dual-booted Windows Vista and Mac OS X before using the Vista bootloader I decided to use this method again for the quad-boot.
A quick run through the major specs of the laptop:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 (2 x 1.66Ghz, 2Mb L2 cache)
Memory: 1Gb DDR2
Hard Drive: Western Digital 120Gb (111.79Gb formatted)
So Vista was installed without any memorable trouble, I gave it a 30Gb NTFS partition because Vista has a reputation for being resource-hungry. Then the fun started - I installed Fedora perfectly onto 15Gb, partitioning it using Fedora’s own installer. I ignored the need for a swap partition because I was going to be short on drive space and I wasn’t planning on using Fedora as the main OS on the laptop.
Getting GRUB to work properly proved to be my first learning curve. Where OS X had simply installed its bootloader on its partition and set it to be active, Fedora installed it onto the bootsector of the hard drive. Through Google I managed to find the commands to enter at the Repair prompt on the Vista installation DVD to re-write Vista’s bootsector:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
I then booted to the Ubuntu LiveCD that I had downloaded when I planned on installing Ubuntu. At the terminal, I entered:
sudo grub
find /boot/grub/stage1
I was given the partition number where Linux was installed and therefore where I had to reinstall the GRUB bootloader:
root (hd0,1)
setup (hd0,1)
I then had GRUB setup on the bootsector of the partition and not the drive. I later discovered that this could be done through one of the advanced menus on the Fedora installer. Oh well, live and learn :).
Entering quit then returned me to the main command prompt, where I then had to take a disk-dump of the bootsector so I could feed it into the Vista bootloader:
sudo fdisk -l
sudo dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/linux.bin bs=512 count=1
The first command lists all of the partitions on the disk so I can see how Linux labelled them. The second command actually took the first 512 bytes (i.e. the first sector) of the partition and dumped it inside a file on the root drive called “linux.bin”. I then transferred this to my USB memory stick to put onto Vista.
Once I had my copy of GRUB dumped into a file, I booted into Vista and fired a command prompt. The “boot.ini” method has been changed to a command-line based bootloader, so if you’re confident with the command line you’re ok. If not, download EasyBCD from NeoSmart. Assuming you have called the file “linux.bin” and it’s in the root C:\ drive:
bcdedit /create /d “Fedora Core 7 - Linux” /application BOOTSECTOR
That will give you a long identifier string to use with the rest of these commands - in place of {YOUR-ID-HERE}:
bcdedit /set {YOUR-ID-HERE} device partition=C:
bcdedit /set {YOUR-ID-HERE} path \linux.bin
bcdedit /displayorder {YOUR-ID-HERE} /addlast
After that, I rebooted and I had a lovely dual-boot setup with Linux and Vista :D.
