How to use GRUB in WINDOWS environment

There is a project in sourceforge.net called WINGRUB/GRUB4DOS. It is an extension of GRUB in DOS environment enables dos users to run configuration console in real mode. The project also has a utility called WINGRUB to help configuring and installing GRUB in the WINDOWS environment.

Download location: https://sourceforge.net/projects/grub4dos

How to Install

Before this you should know why we use this products. Following are the cases in which this products is very useful.

1. To install Fedora Linux Without Burning CD
2. To make dual boot system Linux & Windows on same system
3. In case, window installation update MBR and you are not able get Linux Grub boot loader.

Here is a good article for 1 option How to use GRUB in WINDOWS environment

The steps for 2 and 3 option here:

Download wingrub from the location sourceforge.net and extract all files using winrar to your root folder c:\. You will find a executable file name called grldr on your c:\ that will be used by windows to run boot loader. Look at boot directory on c:\

Now you need to open c:\boot\grub\menu.lst and add these following lines.

title Fedora Linux
kernel (hd0,0)/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,0)/initrd.img

you can change title whatever ease to you. You also require to change hd0 value depending upon your Linux partition in which Linux installed . Please make sure this before editing. Normally, it can be hda0,hda1,hda2…… or hdb0,hdb1,hdb2……

Now you need to change boot.ini file to load grldr on boot

Open boot.ini file by typing c:\boot.ini in Run command. If this does not work go to system => advanced tab => startup and recovery => settings => system startup => edit.
Here is the content of boot.ini in my case. It may differ in your case.

[boot loader] timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP Professional” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

Add this line at the end of file.

C:\grldr=”Start GRUB”

Restart your PC and you will get “Start GRUB” boot options.

Written by Bala Krishna

Bala Krishna is web developer and occasional blogger from Bhopal, MP, India. He like to share idea, issue he face while working with the code.

This article has 5 comments

  1. Andrew

    I came here pulled by your words “How to use GRUB in WINDOWS” and “How to Install”. However, there are great differences from the reality. To start I downloaded WINGRB0206.EXE from Sourceforge, but when installing there was no need for extracting anything, there was no grldr on the root directory, no menu.lst but a sample.lst to be made as a menu.
    Here, with so many differences I had to to give up reading.
    I’m sure you have not invented all these differences. Probably, you are referring to a very old version. Very old because the WINGRB0206.EXE I downloaded is dated as from October 2004, which is already quite a few years away.

  3. laverità

    the problem is that GRUB4DOS is a linux program based,
    for this is naturally a stupid software that work like linux…
    in a very bad way, is a stupi program like all the program base on linux, !!! put it in the wc

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