solaris 10 and windows x64 dual boot redux

A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
systems?

I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.

woland

Charlie
Tue Mar 07 00:24:37 CST 2006

You don't have a choice. The MS boot manager will not let you choose
anything but MS OS types. You can use a third party boot manager if you wish
(I usually do on machines I boot across to both UNIX and Windows) or you can
install Windows, then install Solaris. I like to create my partitions
first - creating multiple primary partitions and leaving the first one for
UNIX (some of them didn't like not being in the first 1024 cylinders, at
least in the old days), and then installing Windows onto the second one.
This requires partitioning software that allows you to create multiple
primary partitions. Another way around this is a bios that allows you to
change the order of hard drives. IAC, Solaris should have a way to boot over
to Windows, though I don't have any familiarity with it, I confess.

--
Charlie.
http://msmvps.com/xperts64

woland wrote:
> A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
> anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
> grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
> systems?
>
> I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
> solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
> messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
> exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
>
> woland

Thomas
Tue Mar 07 00:52:34 CST 2006

This might be useful for some possibilities:
http://michael.gasperi.priv.at/documents/solaris-9-dual-boot-with-windows-xp

Tom
MSMVP
Windows Shell/User


"woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141709846.038067.146900@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
|A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
| anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
| grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
| systems?
|
| I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
| solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
| messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
| exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
|
| woland
|

Tony
Tue Mar 07 03:26:41 CST 2006

We are all limited by what we like, once the only other loader I knew about
was LILO - now, there seem to be wide concent that GRUB is a more modern
job. If you find that is the way to go - here is where you can get the GRUB
manual (some 85 pages of all the gory details in PDF). Should keep you on
the 'straight and narrow'.


Tony. . .


"woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141709846.038067.146900@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
> anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
> grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
> systems?
>
> I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
> solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
> messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
> exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
>
> woland
>

Tony
Tue Mar 07 03:36:11 CST 2006

Sorry - forgot to paste!

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.pdf


Tony. . .


"Tony Sperling" <tony.sperling@dbREMOVEmail.dk> wrote in message
news:uRiLDlcQGHA.4312@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> We are all limited by what we like, once the only other loader I knew
> about was LILO - now, there seem to be wide concent that GRUB is a more
> modern job. If you find that is the way to go - here is where you can get
> the GRUB manual (some 85 pages of all the gory details in PDF). Should
> keep you on the 'straight and narrow'.
>
>
> Tony. . .
>
>
> "woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:1141709846.038067.146900@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>>A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
>> anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
>> grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
>> systems?
>>
>> I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
>> solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
>> messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
>> exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
>>
>> woland
>>
>
>

jacob
Tue Mar 07 14:40:27 CST 2006

woland a écrit :
> A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
> anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
> grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
> systems?
>
> I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
> solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
> messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
> exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
>
> woland
>

I have windows server 64 bits coexisting peacefully with linux
mandrake 64 bits, windows server 2003 (32 bits) windows xp (32 bits)
and some others

The BEST solution I have found so far is having each OS in a separate
disk, and having the boot menu letting me choose which OS I want
to drive by choosing the boot disk.

I leave the default OS in the IDE1 disk, that boots windows 2003 64 bits.
When I need linux for some customer request I press F11 at boot and
I boot from lilo in the second SATA disk, that allows me to boot
either Mandrake or Debian linux. Note that lilo allows you to boot
from the SATA disk, but windows doesn't, so it is a good idea to
use SATA for linux systems, and leave the IDE disks for windows.

The second IDE disk contains windows server 32 bits, and windows
xp 32 bits. When I boot this disk I arrive into a secondary boot
menu.

Each OS thinks it is the only one. No problems at all. The only
time I lost an OS was when I tried to install windows VISTA that
destroyed my windows XP (32) system and the boot loader in the drive.
The other OSses were not affected.

jacob

P.S. Something unrelated: Linux sees NTFS partitions and can read them.
It would be nice if Windows could read linux partitions. Someone here
knows about an EXT3 file system support for Windows?

Tony
Tue Mar 07 15:57:08 CST 2006

Yes, I've seen it - I think it was on PAMD64. . .


Tony. . .


"jacob navia" <jacob@jacob.remcomp.fr> wrote in message
news:uR%23eZdiQGHA.6084@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> woland a écrit :
> > A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
> > anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
> > grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
> > systems?
> >
> > I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
> > solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
> > messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
> > exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.
> >
> > woland
> >
>
> I have windows server 64 bits coexisting peacefully with linux
> mandrake 64 bits, windows server 2003 (32 bits) windows xp (32 bits)
> and some others
>
> The BEST solution I have found so far is having each OS in a separate
> disk, and having the boot menu letting me choose which OS I want
> to drive by choosing the boot disk.
>
> I leave the default OS in the IDE1 disk, that boots windows 2003 64 bits.
> When I need linux for some customer request I press F11 at boot and
> I boot from lilo in the second SATA disk, that allows me to boot
> either Mandrake or Debian linux. Note that lilo allows you to boot
> from the SATA disk, but windows doesn't, so it is a good idea to
> use SATA for linux systems, and leave the IDE disks for windows.
>
> The second IDE disk contains windows server 32 bits, and windows
> xp 32 bits. When I boot this disk I arrive into a secondary boot
> menu.
>
> Each OS thinks it is the only one. No problems at all. The only
> time I lost an OS was when I tried to install windows VISTA that
> destroyed my windows XP (32) system and the boot loader in the drive.
> The other OSses were not affected.
>
> jacob
>
> P.S. Something unrelated: Linux sees NTFS partitions and can read them.
> It would be nice if Windows could read linux partitions. Someone here
> knows about an EXT3 file system support for Windows?

VWWall
Tue Mar 07 16:09:12 CST 2006

woland wrote:
> A question regarding previous posts on this, and sorry if I missed
> anything: would it be better to use the windows x64 boot manager or
> grubs(?) that comes with Solaris 10, when dual booting these two
> systems?

If you let GRUB install on the x64 system partition MBR, it will offer a
choice of "Windows" on boot-up. This will take you to the Win x64
boot.ini which can offer other Windows dual boot options. I've edited
the GRUB "menu.1st" to make Windows the default with a 5 second delay.
boot.ini is edited to go to WinXP32 as default, and WinXP x64 a choice.

If you install Windows after Linux, it will re-write the MBR and ignore
GRUB. Most Linux distros have a "boot repair" to fix this
>
> I've dual booted linux and win before, but I've never done it with
> solaris, and this will be the first go with solaris for me. I hate
> messing up my MBR, which I've done before with LILO (I'm not sure
> exactly what I did to achieve this). So, any help is welcome.

FIXMBR from the Win CD will "un-mess" the MBR, but will also "un-seat"
GRUB! A sure way to avoid all this is to make a floppy boot-loader to
start Solaris.

--
Virg Wall, P.E.

woland
Tue Mar 07 19:54:14 CST 2006

Thank you all for all your help. This was very helpful. Since I
already have Win x64 installed, I'll try letting Grub install on the
x64 partition. I'm going to have a separate hard drive for Solaris 10.

I forgot to mention this, but does having two SATA hard drives make a
difference in any of your suggestions? That's what I'm going to do,
have win x64 on one SATA drive and Solaris 10 on another SATA. If it
doesn't make a difference, then I guess I'll know.

Again, thank you everyone for your posts.

woland

Tony
Tue Mar 07 20:29:07 CST 2006

Your only worry is if Solaris needs driver support to see the SATA. I'm
affraid I cannot be of much assistance on that matter. Personally, I wanted
to have 64bit SUSE on my other SATA, but the only driver I could find was
source, so I would need to compile to install, and I cannot compile until I
have installed. (sic!) Instead I set up a RAID 0 for my winx64, certainly
not the same thing, but I am fairly happy.

Tony. . .


"woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141782854.026110.49520@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Thank you all for all your help. This was very helpful. Since I
> already have Win x64 installed, I'll try letting Grub install on the
> x64 partition. I'm going to have a separate hard drive for Solaris 10.
>
> I forgot to mention this, but does having two SATA hard drives make a
> difference in any of your suggestions? That's what I'm going to do,
> have win x64 on one SATA drive and Solaris 10 on another SATA. If it
> doesn't make a difference, then I guess I'll know.
>
> Again, thank you everyone for your posts.
>
> woland
>

Randy
Wed Mar 08 03:03:41 CST 2006

Care to summarize your impressions of Solaris 10, especially versus 64bit
Windows (if you've been able to use solaris yet)? I've been toying with the
idea of multi-booting a test system to Solaris as well, but only have an
older 32bit version (8), so not worth installing on my 64bit system...

"woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141782854.026110.49520@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Thank you all for all your help. This was very helpful. Since I
> already have Win x64 installed, I'll try letting Grub install on the
> x64 partition. I'm going to have a separate hard drive for Solaris 10.
>
> I forgot to mention this, but does having two SATA hard drives make a
> difference in any of your suggestions? That's what I'm going to do,
> have win x64 on one SATA drive and Solaris 10 on another SATA. If it
> doesn't make a difference, then I guess I'll know.
>
> Again, thank you everyone for your posts.
>
> woland
>

woland
Wed Mar 08 12:54:58 CST 2006

I'm still waiting for my hard drive to come, so I haven't installed it
yet.

Solaris 10 is a free download and is 64 bit. You can download it at
www.sun.com, just follow the links for Solaris 10.

woland
Randy wrote:
> Care to summarize your impressions of Solaris 10, especially versus 64bit
> Windows (if you've been able to use solaris yet)? I've been toying with the
> idea of multi-booting a test system to Solaris as well, but only have an
> older 32bit version (8), so not worth installing on my 64bit system...
>
> "woland" <wolandepiphanius@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:1141782854.026110.49520@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > Thank you all for all your help. This was very helpful. Since I
> > already have Win x64 installed, I'll try letting Grub install on the
> > x64 partition. I'm going to have a separate hard drive for Solaris 10.
> >
> > I forgot to mention this, but does having two SATA hard drives make a
> > difference in any of your suggestions? That's what I'm going to do,
> > have win x64 on one SATA drive and Solaris 10 on another SATA. If it
> > doesn't make a difference, then I guess I'll know.
> >
> > Again, thank you everyone for your posts.
> >
> > woland
> >