EasyBCD is a Windows boot loader tool to add other operating systems, trouble is I cannot get EasyBCD to see openSUSE. When I try to boot from menu I get dumped at Grub4DOS prompt. It’s worked with Ubuntu based distros in the past. Using GRUB2 screws some windows updates. Am I screwed? There is a way with BCDEdit, but looks cumbersome. May have to set aside some time to read and re-read guide till it sinks in.
May be you start with explaining what you are trying to achieve.
I want to chain load GRUB (installed on secondary drive) from 7’s bootloader.
Install GRUB in partition, copy partition first sector and add it to Windows bootloader. See detailed description e.g. here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1342241. You will need to copy first sector from partition every time GRUB is updated in openSUSE.
Take care the all OS’s are installed in the same boot mode. ie all EFI or all legacy. Mixing modes will kill chaining between them. In the bast easyBCD hs not worked reall well with openSUSE. But it depnds on versions and no I don’t track such things since I only run Windows in a VM.
The referencedd URL describes Ubuntu, bcedit and a long unnecessary process.
Been awhile but I remember using EasyBCD as simple and almost straight forward.
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Determine the partition location for the openSUSE boot(same as root by default) as seen and described by Windows(not openSUSE since you are configuring the Windows bootloader). IIRC EasyBCD doesn’t do this well natively so you will need to use another tool
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Create your new entry pointing to the openSUSE boot partition using EasyBCD.
And it should just work after that.
TSU
As far as I know, EasyBCD or BCDEDIT is only useful for legacy booting. I don’t think there’s a way to use it for UEFI booting.
On my laptop (legacy booting), I have been using Windows boot manager (from Windows 7) to boot opensuse 13.2, and to boot opensuse Tumbleweed. It works fine. I used “BCDEDIT” to set it up. As far as I know, “EasyBCD” is a GUI frontend to “BCDEDIT”, and I think it also takes care of copying the boot sector to a Windows file. But I have never actually used “EasyBCD”.
As far as I know, the problem with Windows updates, is when the opensuse partition is the active partition.
As long as the Windows partition is active, you should be fine.
I guess we would need to know:
(1) is this a UEFI system or a legacy boot system? (If UEFI, then EasyBCD is not going to work).
(2) how does opensuse boot? Where is grub2 installed?
Hmm, I’m not sure if that is a problem.
Opensuse probably installed grub2 in such a way that the secondary drive is seen to be hard drive 0. But if youy are starting with Windows on the main drive, then Windows probably sees it as hard drive 1. I don’t know enough about grub2 to know if that is a problem. If it is, then you might have to reinstall grub2 from opensuse so that it sees the Windows drive as first, and then you will only be able to boot it from the Windows boot manager.
Sorry, I answered too fast. Chainloading from secondary drive could indeed be a challenge. Normally GRUB is using boot drive passed by BIOS, but in this case I am not sure how to tell Windows that it should pass different drive number. It could be that “bcdedit device” does it, but I do not know for sure.
It is also possible to patch GRUB boot block to explicitly set BIOS drive number.
Finally it is possible to generate GRUB image that will search for openSUSE filesystem (not depending on BIOS) and execute GRUB from it.
Indeed.
If you want to manipulate the Windows bootloader using UEFI, there is a sister utility, EasyUEFI
Following my previous general description, this should still be “falling out of bed” easy.
So, life is still “Easy”
TSU