Q4OS Forum

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Multiboot grub issue

Hi, first post here. I have an old laptop, an IBM thinkpad t23 I really like. I have a multiboot on it with windows xp, 7 and 8 (yes I know what I said, and yes it is old but it can manage). It has a pentium 3 1.13ghz, 512 mb of ram and a 256gb ssd.
Each OS has its own primary partition, and I created a new primary partition for Q4OS using the cd installer and marked it as root. After the installation grub rescue appeared showing unknown filesystem. I tried "ls (hd0,msdosX)" with every option and all of them result in unknown filesystem. I tried to fix grub with other linux OS live with no effect, and also tried boot-repair-disk but the option to repair didnt even show up lol
Maybe its a simple mistake Im making and its actually super easy to fix but Im kinda lost and google didnt offer many other options.
Any suggestions??

(I dont want to sound rude but I know the machine is old, I know windows xp would be good on its own, I know Im pushing its limits but thats what I love to do)
Thanks

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Re: Multiboot grub issue

I ended up making the situation worse. Trying to fix the boot loader I ended up corrupting the windows files. Dont know if this is actually better, I can now manage my installations better. I can make an extended partition with logical partitions for windows and then a primary and another extended for q4os. What are my possibilities? Any suggestions on how to do this? There's a tutorial in sevenforums on how to do this but I dont know how to implement q4os to that
Any help is appreciated

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Re: Multiboot grub issue

Okay, possible title edit. I dont know how to change title.
In a couple of hours windows 8 will be done installing and I will have a primary partition for system reserved, and a extended partition with 3 logical partitions, containing windows xp, 7 and 8. I still have around 90gb of unused storage and I still need to install Q4OS. What should I do? Should I create a primary partition for root and 2 logical in an extended partition for home and swap? I dont know what will work

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,250

Website

Re: Multiboot grub issue

We would let just unformatted free space for Q4OS installer to partition it off. The installer lets you choose how much space to use and what partitions to create in manual mode.

If you have Windows 8 installed you could also use Q4OS for Windows installer https://www.q4os.org/dqa014.html

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Re: Multiboot grub issue

Thanks for the response! I will then let it do its thing to the unformatted free space. This laptop has a 32bit cpu so I wont be able to use  the windows installer. But I believe thats alright, the first method should work too

I'll update with news asap

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Re: Multiboot grub issue

After installing Q4OS the grub rescue pops up. All the options again are labelled as filesystem is unknown and the error says no such partition. I dont know whats going on. I let it do its thing it made partitions itself and installed itself. Any ideas?

Irina060

Member

Registered: 2022-06-20

Posts: 14

Re: Multiboot grub issue

Okay, I think I almost got it. I used super-grub-2-disk to boot back to windows 7 to try and check if easyBCD would help fix mbr and set the actual Q4OS in a windows bootloader. And it kinda worked to a certain extend. It pops up in the bootloader but if I try to enter it a grub4dos promt appears. I dont know if this is worse or better but I feel like I need to adjust the drive letter to the one that matches the root of Q4OS. I will try that first. Please let me know what Im doing I dont want to brick this XDD
I know I posted this recently but this is a bit lonely