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I have another situation. I'm still in the process of triple-booting my pc, and I am having trouble with grub4dos.

I created a 100mb fat16 partition on which I installed freeDOS. I then copied grub4dos to that same partition. Using gParted, I then set the fat 16 partition ( dev/sda0 ) as the active partition.

My intention is for it to work like this. I power on my pc, it boots into freedos. From there I load grub4dos. And from there I launch the o/s of my choice.

Now I've scoured the grub4dos website trying to find exactly what I need. I figure there is some sort of config file which I edit or something like that? Anyway, I could not find what I was looking for, so I figured I'd once again turn to superuser.

Any help is great!

Thanks.

Edit: I finally figured out that the "config file" I'm supposed to edit is menu.lst.

I've configured it for my Windows7 partition with this: title Windows7_x64 root (hd0,0) chainloader +1 It boots fine.

I think I'm on the right track...

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Thats not exactly how grub works. What you're really going to want is a boot partition (which you have) with all the grub files. From there, you install grub to the MBR of the drive, so it starts up, gives you the menu, and then runs whatever OS's bootup process.

Now, this can lead to hitting another menu, such as the "Do you want to start in safe mode?" menu in Windows.

This lets you skip the "Boot into freedos to boot into something else" step. And, actually, if your triple-boot setup includes some flavor of Linux, install that last, and it should auto-configure grub. If you want to tweak it, though, you will need to boot into linux to work on it.

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I don't really see what difference it makes whether I install grub4dos to the MBR or if I run it manually from freeDOS (which I prefer). The place I'm stuck at right now is I can't boot into Ubuntu. I'm getting the "Error 13" message. I think all I need is to find the specific kernel and initrd commands and I should be good to go. – Thomas B. Aug 29 '10 at 3:27
Ah, if you are using the newest Ubuntu, it actually uses Grub 2, so it can be a little tricky. Plus, it will change every time you upgrade the kernel. You will probably want to chainload the grub4dos into the grub2 installed on the Ubuntu partition. That, or have Ubuntu manage grub itself. Therefore, something like: title Ubuntu root (hd1,0) chainloader +1 – Ryan Gooler Aug 29 '10 at 3:32
That's the thing. I use almost that exact command except it's root (hd0,4). I have my Ubuntu 10.04 in an extended partition that consists of itself, and a 4gb swap partition. When I go to boot into Ubuntu, it gives me Error 13 which I cannot remember exactly but it's something along the lines of unrecognized executable. Also for some reason grub4dos thinks it's a ext2fs when it's ext4fs. – Thomas B. Aug 29 '10 at 3:36
Thats because ext4 is backwards compatible with ext3 and ext2. However, IIRC, grub 1 doesn't really know how to deal with ext4. You also should try to make sure that Ubuntu installed grub to hd(0,4), because otherwise you might be trying to chainload into nothing. This exact level of fun stuff is why I recommended installing Ubuntu last, and letting it autoconfigure all the stuff for you. :D – Ryan Gooler Aug 29 '10 at 4:02
How can I check to see if Ubuntu installed grub? I have a feeling a reinstalling of Ubuntu may be in order... – Thomas B. Aug 29 '10 at 4:07
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