rhel7 with Windows 7
I have a desktop with Windows 7 and I installed RHEL7 Desktop (Client) on that machine and I wanted the dual boot option. When I installed RHEL7, it got installed on that desktop but it hasn't given me the option of booting into Windows 7. After login I checked and both my Windows partitions are intact as I have selected un-partitioned space for installation. Hence is there a way I can reinstall RHEL7 and while installing I can inform it to consider Windows for boot option? Any help is sincerely appreciated.
Responses
I have almost the same problem. The only difference is that i'm using Windows Server 2008 R2 and RHEL 7 Server, also I'm installing on RAID.
Probably I just can modify some bootloader file to make Windows "visible" for bootloader? Or I can instal RHEL 7 again but somewhere add Windows to boot-loader?
found this video which probably will work for Windows 7 too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QzbX8o7pSY
You probably need to create that option in grub manually. I have found this by just googling around, the situation should be really similar to yours even though the OS aren't exactly the same, try to take a look:
http://boringtalk.wordpress.com/2013/05/29/solving-the-problem-of-missing-windows-7-entry-in-grub2-on-fedora-18/
If it doesn't help I can try to reproduce on a VM and give you some indications myself but I don't have time for that right now :/
Let me know.
This solution article How to modify grub.cfg in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 so that grub2 detects Windows Installation describes how to add Windows entry to grub.cfg.
This recommendation is what I would consider the "easy" or "lazy" way out of this situation.
Take a look at refind.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
I struggled at first dealing with making sure you had /boot/efi, /boot, etc... and then to tie it all back together using /etc/default/grub was more than I cared to manage. So - refind takes care of it all ;-)
Thank you I will try to apply this article https://access.redhat.com/solutions/961353
I heard about "magic" rpm called "os-prober" which can automatically detect installed OSs and update configs. If such thing exist in RHEL and can it help?
this video works fine for RHEL 7 / Windows Server 2008 R2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJOCWhW6Stw
Thanks Oleg!!
Just done this on Windows 7 Pro and RHEL 7 desktop. Works perfectly!!
(Just remember to put your actual OS and not 'server2008' like I did half concentrating.)
For those happening on this discussion late, Anaconda's deficiency in non-UEFI dual boot installs is that it doesn't have ntfs-3g available to it. This means that grub2-mkconfig can't grok the Windows partition. So, the simple solution , after finishing the RHEL7 install and booting first time into RHEL, is to first install the epel repo, then install ntfs-3g, and then run 'grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg'. You should see it 'finding' your Windows install without having to manually tweak anything.
the solution was as follow as ROOT user
cd /etc/grub.d/[root@Fact grub.d]# ls 00_header 01_users 20_linux_xen 30_os-prober 41_custom 00_tuned 10_linux 20_ppc_terminfo 40_custom README
vim 41_customadd the following echo "Adding Windows 7" >&2 cat <<EOF menuentry "Windows 7" { set root=(hd0,1) chainloader +1 } EOF save the changes and go
grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfgyou are doen!!!
reboot your system find windows beside RHEL
Welcome! Check out the Getting Started with Red Hat page for quick tours and guides for common tasks.
