Thinkpads Forum

so after i plain old messed up my xp installation on my thinkpad (after trying to also put fedora 5 on here) i finally had it right so i could dual boot.


then i saw a link and an arcticle claiming he found how you could tripple boot (xp, fedora, and the access ibm button on boot up). naturally i tried to follow him and it didnt work. i still had the backup drive but the access ibm button did nothing at startup. what was worse than that is after i got fedora installed and grub working as my boot loader, it made it so i could edit the ibm service partition in windows.


does anyone know how i can have all 3 working properly?

Could you post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file?

(Just include the part at the end that lists the various boot options and not the commented lines at the beginning of the file)

Also please post the output of:

oh im ok right now, im just running XP and the service partition.

and by messed up i meant that somehow the ntfs partition got changed from ntfs to raw. i was able to find some progs that let me recover my data som im all set.

i was just wondering if anyone knew how i could set it up right so i could try again sometime.

One way to do this is to start with your Windows XP and IBM Service partitions set up as they are now. I assume that you have Windows in the first partition of the hard drive and the IBM Service partition in the second, that both are primary partitions, and that partition 1 is active. Then the IBM bootloader, which resides in the bootsectors of the disk, takes care of starting up into the Service partition when you press the "Access IBM" button on startup, correct?

If this is working to your satisfaction, then when you install Linux create a third primary partition for /root and create an extended partition for holding logical drives for /swap, /home, and whatever else you prefer. You could do this with the Fedora installer, but it's been so long since I've used it that I can't tell you the specifics. Or if you have Partition Magic you could set up the other partitions first and then let Fedora map to the already existing partitions.

When you get to the step where the installer is to install GRUB, be sure to install it to the third primary partition where /root is located. This way GRUB will not overwrite the IBM bootloader and change the way that the Access IBM button works.

Finally, you then need a way to make GRUB start so that you can start Fedora. I saw an article on how to make the Windows bootloader start GRUB on the Gentoo forums here:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Boot_ ... R)_and_why

Start at the part called Fooling Windows

By doing it this way you would then see the Windows bootloader when you start up (unless you have pressed "Access IBM" to boot into the IBM Service partition). On the Windows bootloader menu you will have a choice to either boot Windows XP or Fedora.

This is just one way to do this. I've seen other articles describe how to make GRUB the master bootloader and have it start Windows, Linux, or the IBM Service partition, but then you lose the "Access IBM" button functionality.

ok, when i installed fedora i think i put grub on the first partition, overwriting the ibm bootloader.


i dont know if it matters but yes windows was first, swap (for linux) second, root 3rd and ibm service at the end.


ill read the forum post, thanks for the help.