Thinkpads Forum

My penguin-fingers are getting itchy, so I'm going to install me some Linux again. This time, though, I'd like to keep the R&R partition and all its functionality intact.

ThinkWiki offers some good advice about making ThinKVantage an option in the GRUB menu, but that does not appeal to me for two reasons: first, the ThinkVantage button doesn't work, which doesn't really matter at all, but more importantly, changes to the MBR (such as may be performed by an R&R update) will bugger my GRUB. So I don't want to do that.

ThinkWiki also offers an alternative solution on this page:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery (see "Using the Windows Bootloader to Boot Linux")
It's pretty simple, when you think about it. But the instructions are written for XP and I'm using Vista. I know that there's no boot.ini in Vista; you use BCDEDIT. Has anyone done this and found if it works or not? Anything else I need to change in ThinkWiki's procedure?

Thanks.

j-dawg:

Here is an article about using Vista's BOOTMGR to boot a Linux distribution (you can ignore the part about BitLocker).

Another alternative that I use is to install your Linux distribution to a primary partition (for the root partition; you can put /home and /swap in logical partitions). When it's time to install GRUB, make sure to install to the Linux root partition instead of to the MBR so that you will leave the IBM bootloader intact and retain the ThinkVantage button function.

Next, using your favorite partition tool, set the Active flag on the Linux partition. When you boot the machine it will boot to GRUB and, from there, you can choose either Vista or Linux. If you press the ThinkVantage button while booting you will boot to the recovery partition.

To undo this just set the Active flag on the Vista partition and you will then boot directly to Vista's BOOTMGR.

k0lo wrote:j-dawg:

Another alternative that I use is to install your Linux distribution to a primary partition (for the root partition; you can put /home and /swap in logical partitions). When it's time to install GRUB, make sure to install to the Linux root partition instead of to the MBR so that you will leave the IBM bootloader intact and retain the ThinkVantage button function.

Next, using your favorite partition tool, set the Active flag on the Linux partition. When you boot the machine it will boot to GRUB and, from there, you can choose either Vista or Linux. If you press the ThinkVantage button while booting you will boot to the recovery partition.

To undo this just set the Active flag on the Vista partition and you will then boot directly to Vista's BOOTMGR.

I have a friend that uses this method you outlined above and it works really well. If I had just one hard drive in my ThinkPad I would use this method.

Cheers!