Red Hat

Hi all,

Good day. I just installed RHEL6.3 into my laptop to learn RH.
There is an existing Windows 7 in there.

After installing the RHEL, the laptop will just boot to Windows 7.

I tried to use this BCDedit to add Linux entry to the boot menu, BUT each time i pick the redhat selection, it just reboot and back to the same menu.

Here the detail of my partition:
/dev/sda1 --> is where my Windows 7 resides
/dev/sda2 --> another NTFS partition where i kept all my data files
/dev/sda3 --> here is the location i installed RHEL
/dev/sda4 ---> extended partition
/dev/sda5 ----> here is funny, it says there id =5, if not mistaken, i believe this is the unallocated space but i dun see my swap.

How i go to fix this ?
I have been going round for hours.

Thank you.

Personally, I would use grub and let that chainload to the windows boot loader for that menu option.

Hi there,

how do i get to this grub ?
thanks

You must have skipped the option during the RHEL 6.3 install to install a bootloader, i.e. GRUB, to the MBR.

See https://access.redhat.com/knowledge/...nstalling.html for details about how to now install GRUB.

Once you have GRUB installed and you can boot into RHEL 6.3 you need to add a stanza to /boot/grub/menu.lst to chain load Windows 7 when you select that menu option. Just do an Internet search for "chainloader windows" and you will find plenty of examples of how to do this. Just remember, the version of GRUB used in RHEL 6.3 is GRUB Legacy - not GRUB2.

hi there,
hmm, the strange part is during the installation, there is one screen it ask where i want to put the bootloader, the default option was /dev/sda but i change it and put it under /dev/sda3.

I think the grub is there, but not sure how do i get to it.
usually when installing in a dual environment, what is the best practice ? it is to put the bootloader in the /dev/sda or the /dev/sdx where the linux / is ?

thank you

Changing grub to be on the partition with RHEL is probably why it's booting straight to the windows bootlader which is forcing you to do the bootloading the hard way. Installing grub to a partition rather than MBR is for people who have some other bootloader that is expected to be able to chainload to grub. Windows can, but it's the harder way of the two.

It sounds like you haven't really used the RHEL side yet, so I would just do another install but this time leaving grub at the MBR. The RHEL installer should automatically pick up on the fact that you're dual booting and configure the menu option for booting into windows for you, which is why this is the easier way to go: nothing else to do after the install.