Problems with dual boot in an old pc (pentium 4) without UEFI
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I write all of you because I have expended two weks trying to solve this problem, I have seen a lot of youtube videos and read a lot of forums but I cannot fix this.
I want to clarify that I'm only a user but I'm not an expert in linux or windows.I have already installed dual-boot pcs in newer computers but I really really realy need some help! I'm having a lot of troubles trying to have pentium4 pc with dual boot, the idea is to have windows 7 and linux Mint. I also know that it is possible to have a dual OS system in this pc because this pc had windows 7 and it was updated to windows 10, afnter that I installed linux and it was fine, but as W10 was too slow for this pc, I re-installed a version of windows 7 and when I tried to re-install linux, all the problems started.
After installing linux and rebooting, the grub does not work and show the grub-rescue message. I have tried all the standard solutions, changing the root in the grub-rescue terminal, using live usb sessions to install and use grub-installer, boot-repair, grub-customize and in windows, grub2win and easybcd2,4 but I always have this problem. I have triend installing the grub in the harddrive and also in the linux partition. I also have formatted my hard drive and installed windows and linux several times and I always have the same problem. When I want to boot windows I have to use bootrec to rebuild the bcd.
The pc has a pentium 4, cpu 300GHz, RAM 2 Gb, 32bit and a HD of 160 Gb and I have 5 partitions:
- sda1 100MB reserved for the system primary partition
- sda2 C: primary partition NTFS for windows
- sda3 D. primary partition NTFS for storage
- Sda5 Logical partition ext 4, for linux
- sda6 logical partition swap
I don't know if the problem is because I try to install a recent version of linux and the grub assume that I have UEFi and search for efi . It is that, what would be the grub configuration for a pc without UEFI? (I also have tried to install Mint 14 and a few other light distros)
I also have tried with the easybcd2.4 and it allowed me to create a boot menu with windows and linux but it fails to boot linux. I have tried to edit NEoGrub menu.lst file but I cannot find the right configuration. Do you have a sample file that could work for my configuration? I've read that it is based on grub4dos syntax but I have no idea about this.
I want to resume my questions:
- Is it different the grub.cfg file for PCs without UEFI? If it is different, someone could provide an example ( or help me to create) a grub cfg file for a dual windows-linux ?
- I think that it could be easier to change the bcd configuration using the correct menu.lst file, someone could help me to write an appropiate file for my configuration?
- If I'm doing the things in a really wrong direction, could you please show me how I could install the two OS and which version would fit more with my pc?
- Do I need to provide more information related to my boot problem? How could I get it?
- Could this be a problem related with windows and I should need an specific version?
I want to sincerely thanks to the people that will take their time to read this message and for the comments and ideas that you could have.
Asked by Eight052
(1 rep)
Aug 27, 2020, 07:59 AM
Last activity: Aug 27, 2020, 12:01 PM
Last activity: Aug 27, 2020, 12:01 PM