rhel7 with Windows 7

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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.

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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 ;-)

Right. The referenced RH article does not deal with [U]EFI.

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.)

Actually I used a simple trick of reinstalling freshly as there is no data in RHEL7. While reinstalling I took care of the dual installation and it went well. I found that it was better as I realized that I do not have the option of login into windows 7 almost immediately. Yes, I wasted another 40 minutes to reinstalling the OS but I am not sure if I search internet for 40 minutes will I be able to fix the issue or not. So I think I saved more time by reinstalling RHEL7.

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_custom

add 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.cfg

you are doen!!!

reboot your system find windows beside RHEL

/sbin/grub2-mkconfig: /etc/grub.d/10_windows10: /bin: bad interpreter: Permission denied

This is shown when tried all you said. What should I do?

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