[syslinux] Chainloading from Vista x64 bootloader to Extlinux?

Rune Morling rune.morling at gmail.com
Sat Aug 8 05:09:36 PDT 2009


Hi syslinux list,

Some months ago, hpa was kind enough to help me troubleshoot booting
Extlinux in a system with the following particulars:

* Windows Vista x64 bootloader in the MBR and Vista installed in /dev/sda1
* Extlinux 3.72 installed in the first sector of /dev/sda2 and Foresight
Linux installed in /dev/sda2 (at the time I tried, 3.72 was the default
bootloader in Foresight)

The problem was that chainloading did not work from Vista x64 to Extlinux,
but _did_ work from Vista x64 to GRUB (and hence I'm currently forced to use
GRUB). At the time I don't think hpa went much deeper into it than muttering
something about Vista 'having changed its boot protocol' or something along
those lines.

Now, I read with interest the "Syslinux.exe 64 bits Windows thread" and was
wondering if someone knowledgeable would know if the points brought up in
that thread is the underlying reason that I couldn't boot via chainloading
from the Vista x64 bootloader?

Being able to chainload Extlinux (preferrably w/ext4 support of course ;)
via the Vista x64 boatloader would be awesome, since I'd much rather use
Extlinux. Also, it'd make the dual boot part of the Foresight setup much
slicker.

If this is already possible then I apologize for missing the memo.

Btw, I should probably mention that this is my work laptop and that the
reason I'm not using Extlinux in the MBR is that this breaks the assumptions
of the tools Vista use to manage its boot settings, which makes it
impossible for me to update the boot settings particular to Vista with e.g.
EasyBCD[1] (which I use and which supports GRUB natively). I suspect that
the above also applies to the x64 versions of Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2
and Windows 7.

[1]: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1


Kind Regards,

 -ermo



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