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the grub challenge: dualboot with windows on USB HD

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    the grub challenge: dualboot with windows on USB HD

    Hi everyone,

    OK, I have an interesting challenge here, and I dont seem to be able to solve it myself.

    Situation: My laptop is an HP Pavilion zv6000. On my HD, I have Kubuntu 6.06 installed, using the full HD.

    Now, I want to be able to play World of Warcraft. I've tried it in Linux using several wine variants (free and paid) but I don't get it to work. I've also tried installing it to a Windows XP running in VMWare, again no luck.

    So I bought an external USB harddisk (LaCie 250Gb). It now contains a Windows install. My PC itself won't boot from USB though. So I thought I'd get grub to boot from the external HD instead.

    I don't seem to get it to work though, unfortunately. I've tried quite a few things.

    The latest attempt after Googling around a bit, is a device.map with the following contents:

    Code:
    (hd0)  /dev/hda
    (hd1)  /dev/sda
    And a menu.lst with an entry for Windows as follows:

    Code:
    title      Windows from USB
    root      (hd1,0)
    savedefault
    makeactive
    chainloader   +1
    I ran grub-install to install the new device listed in device.map

    When I now try to do this, I get an error 21: selected disk does not exist.

    I have the weird idea that grub might not be aware of the usb device yet, so does anyone know how to solve this? Can I somehow make grub aware of the USB HD that is attached to my laptop? Are there any other possible solutions to this problem, so that I can boot Windows as well as linux

    I have considered a windows partition on the built-in HD, but since the fs is ext3, shrinking the partition (where I have space enough for a Windows install I must add) is also quite hard. From what I've understood, the only way to do that is to first convert to ext2, and then shrink.

    Any help is much appreciated.

    #2
    Re: the grub challenge: dualboot with windows on USB HD

    Originally posted by stefan koopmanscha
    My PC itself won't boot from USB though.
    How is GRUB supposed to find what the laptop's BIOS obviously is not able to? - I may be missing the point, but this assumptions fails my logic, as I have to admit ... as far as I know, GRUB is not able to access what from the BIOS point of view simply "isn't there".

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      #3
      Re: the grub challenge: dualboot with windows on USB HD

      Well, that was part of my question I guess: If grub would be able to load maybe some extra drivers or something, to find what the BIOS is not able to find

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