Parallels with funny rEFIt, grub boot setup, no boot windows.

[ldura9t]

Help? Parallels with funny rEFIt, grub boot setup, doesn't boot windows.

So, I have somewhat of a unique setup, I think.

I installed ubuntu and XP both on my macbook a little while ago, which worked fine. I used rEFIt for the bootloader, which I never had any issues with; it'd always take me directly to the desired operating system.

Until came Feisty. Overall, I really like feisty, it works much better with my macbook. Unfortunately, when I installed feisty, it also put on Grub. However, rEFIt is still there. What happens in my boot sequence; rEFIt, choose between OS X, linux, and XP. If I choose OSX, it goes there correctly, no issues. If I choose EITHER linux or windows, it goes to Grub. From Grub, I then choose either Ubuntu or Windows.

I didn't think this would be an issue, so I just left it. Until I downloaded the parallels trial.

Booting from 'Boot Camp', it starts loading, and it just doesn't do anything when the screeen says:

"
Parallels(R) VGA-Compatible BIOS Version 2.01

Parallels(R) 3.0 build 4124 (C) 2005-2007 Parallels Software International Inc. All Rights Reserved

640 KB Base Memory
196608 KB Extended Memory
Boot from hard drive... GRUB _

"

From there, it doesn't do anything except make my fan spin loudly.

Does anyone have any suggestions for fixing this, very preferably without destroying either of my other two partitions. (Really can't do this, actually, ubuntu has too much set up currently that I can't afford to go through and set it up again)

Preferably, someone can help soon, since my parallels trial runs out in about 2 weeks?

 

[ldura9t]

Sorry for the bump. But, anyone?

 

[Milamber_Cubed]

Okay, i did this myself the other day and there is a way to fix it, but it's not too much fun.

Basically what's happened is that your feisty install has overwritten the MBR on the drive which windows needs when booting from parallels, but in normal booting refit looks after this for you, which is why you can still boot into windows. To stop this happening if you are ever installing again, make sure you tell Feisty to install to /dev/sda3 instead of (hd0).

My fix involved 2 steps.

1. Put GRUB in the right place.

Now this assumes you have the usual setup of disk0s3 for linux and disk0s4 for Windows. To do this, boot up into Feisty and get to a terminal. Once there, issue the following command:


grub-install /dev/sda3


And you're done. Now when you reboot, there will be two entries for Linux in the rEFIt menu - one from the MBR and one from the 3rd partition. This is so you can still boot into Linux after fixing the MBR so Windows can boot properly in Parallels.

2. Fix the MBR.

Okay the way I did this was weird because I have an odd XP disc. What you should do is the following:

Boot from your XP CD and at the first opportunity that you get to give input you should select the recovery console by pressing R.

Once there it might ask you which installation of windows you want to use, if it does choose the correct one (usually the 1st one).

It will then ask you for your administrator password. After entering this you get a command prompt. Issuing the commands "fixboot" and "fixmbr" should do the trick for ya.

Hope that helps.