Linux dual-boot has issues with Vista & Lenovo software

[trailbarge]

Hello,

Last Black Friday, I got the Lenovo 3000 desktop that was on sale at Office Depot.  I'm not at my house right now so I can't get further details.  I'll fill in later if this does not seem like enough info to get me any help.

This desktop came with a 500GB SATA HD.  I added a 400GB HD for linux, so no repartitioning should be needed.  I just install to sdb and put the boot loader (GRUB) on the MBR of sda, right?  wrong.

I have installed linux on many machines before, but this one has me beat.  Apparently, Vista has its own boot loader or something and does not allow GRUB to stick around.

Soooo.... I read on a techie site (I think ZDnet) that the best solution in this case is to leave Vista on the original HDD, then swap the two drives so the empty is sda and Vista is on sdb, then install linux to the new sda and the boot loader to the MBR of that drive.  Configure the boot loader to swap the drive mapping so Vista doesn't get all sulky and pouty about not being first in line.

I tried this and it SEEMED to work during install time.  Unfortunately, rebooting threw an error about a disk protection system and would not allow me to even get to the boot loader, much less either OS.  Swapping the drives back restored Vista's operability, but now I can't get GRUB to install anywhere that I can get to at boot time.... hence, no linux.

I have gotten hints that this disk protection stuff is mostly for laptops and does a quick-park or something to avoid head crashes in a fall situation.  If so, I don't know WHAT its doing on a desktop.

Can anyone offer a way around this or a way to diable this apparently silly protection?

My end goal is to dual boot with Vista on one SATA drive and Kubuntu or openSuSE on the other SATA drive.

Thanks for any help.  It will save my marriage.

[buddinggeek Retired Moderator]

hello! so you have two sid drives right?first install vista on your original drive and then install linux on other drive..but installl grub on the drive which has vista...hey and dont go for opensuse10.3 it has bugs in the kernel you may not get the bootloader installed at all better go for ubuntu

if you wanna use ubuntu i have another easy method for you

ubuntu 8.04 has a s/w called wubi u can dualboot b/w windows and linux flawlessly whats more you can install it on ntfs partitions

[trailbarge]

Thanks,

I've tried to install GRUB on the MBR of the first drive.  It simply does not work.... upon boot, the computer always goes straight to Vista.  This happens with OpenSuSE or Kubuntu.

As for the other issues, I've heard about wubi, but I really want a real install, not an ntfs install.  I'm sorry to hear about 10.3, because I'm running it on 2 of my other machines with no problems... weird.

Anyone else?  I posted in the Lenovo forum because although my goal is the dual boot, my specific question is really about this disk protection system.  Did I get a laptop install on my desktop system somehow?  Is there a way to get it out of my way?

Thanks again.

[buddinggeek Retired Moderator]

hi

i just found out that vista's bootmanager will simply not allow another os to be added to the mbr therefore it would be wise of you to use either nortons partition magic which wil install a bootloader(it works!)dont try wubi!i did it ubuntu doesnt work as expected like that!

your only option may be a third party boot loader try googling for it