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#299083 - 08/06/2007 13:44 Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
Ok I've got Vista installed but cannot now access either XP or Kubuntu.

My config is as follows:

Drive 0 (PATA)
- Partition 0 NTFS backup drive
- Partition 1 Linux native
- Partition 2 Linux swap
- Partition 3 Linux native
Drive 1 (PATA)
- Partition 0 NTFS
Drive 2 (SATA)
- Partition 0 NTFS - XP installed here
Drive 3 (SATA)
- Partition 0 NTFX - Vista installed here.

What do I need to do so that I can dual boot at least in to Vista/XP (Not that concerned about Kubuntu)?
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#299084 - 08/06/2007 14:04 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
What do I need to do so that I can dual boot at least in to Vista/XP (Not that concerned about Kubuntu)?


You need to mess about with BCDEDIT to set up the other boot loaders.
_________________________
-- roger

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#299085 - 08/06/2007 14:20 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: Roger]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
It won't let me - says access denied. Have downloaded VistaBootPro which lets me change the settings and I've added an XP boot option but it just reboots when I try it
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Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
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#299086 - 08/06/2007 15:32 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
Hmm, most odd. Just changed the boot order in my bios so that rather than HDD1 booting, it's booting from SCSI (my SATA raid controller), and XP has booted up fine (no bootloader though)

So where do I go from here to get Vista to boot as well?
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Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
Rio Karma - now on ebay...

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#299087 - 08/06/2007 15:37 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Hmm, most odd. Just changed the boot order in my bios so that rather than HDD1 booting, it's booting from SCSI (my SATA raid controller), and XP has booted up fine (no bootloader though)

So where do I go from here to get Vista to boot as well?


Stuff something like this onto the bottom of your /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

Code:

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1



Replace the (hd0,0) with the BIOS drive number (hd0, hd1, ..),
and the partition number (counting from 0=first, 1=second, 2=third..).

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#299088 - 08/06/2007 15:41 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: mlord]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
where will I find this?
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Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
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#299089 - 08/06/2007 15:44 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
It won't let me - says access denied.

If it says access denied when you run BCDEDIT, it's because you weren't running from an administrator command prompt. This is a new feature in Vista, unless you specifically set the command prompt to run as administrator (right click on it), then it doesn't have the right privileges to do serious damage.

The other option is to turn off UAC (that's in the control panel users section).
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299090 - 08/06/2007 15:50 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
Aaah, ok thanks
_________________________
Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
Rio Karma - now on ebay...

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#299091 - 08/06/2007 15:52 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
The other option is to turn off UAC (that's in the control panel users section).


If you do this, then seriously consider having separate admin/normal user accounts.
_________________________
-- roger

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#299092 - 08/06/2007 16:05 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: Roger]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
If you do this, then seriously consider having separate admin/normal user accounts.

As equally seriously as you did when you ran XP...
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299093 - 08/06/2007 18:16 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
Quote:
Quote:
Stuff something like this onto the bottom of your /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

where will I find this?

Err.. you'll find it at /boot/grub/menu.lst on your (K)Ubuntu installation.

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#299094 - 09/06/2007 05:04 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
As equally seriously as you did when you ran XP...


I don't know if you're being serious here Tony, but I'll point out that I've run on all of my computers (XP, Vista and 2003; and Ubuntu -- obviously) with separate admin/user accounts for the last 2 years or so, with very few problems. Fast User Switching or Remote Desktop (to localhost) make this relatively painless.

If I find a Windows program that demands admin rights, then it doesn't get installed, unless I absolutely need to use it (like EAC or Steam).

I fixed EAC by tweaking permissions on a couple of .DAT files in its program directory, and by using Nero BurnRights to give me permission to the CD-ROM drive. I fixed Steam by (unfortunately) relaxing the permissions on the whole of its program directory.
_________________________
-- roger

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#299095 - 09/06/2007 05:49 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: mlord]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Stuff something like this onto the bottom of your /boot/grub/menu.lst file:

where will I find this?

Err.. you'll find it at /boot/grub/menu.lst on your (K)Ubuntu installation.


Which I can't get to...
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Mk2a RioCar 120Gb - now sold to the owner of my old car
Rio Karma - now on ebay...

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#299096 - 09/06/2007 06:46 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: furtive]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
Boot from the same CD that you installed Ubuntu with, mount your hard disk and edit the file.
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Remind me to change my signature to something more interesting someday

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#299097 - 09/06/2007 06:48 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: andy]
andy
carpal tunnel

Registered: 10/06/1999
Posts: 5916
Loc: Wivenhoe, Essex, UK
P.S. at the boot prompt on the Ubuntu disk you can probably do some magic to get it to actually boot your Ubuntu install, but last time I did something like that it was with an old root/boot floppy setup, so I can't remember how
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#299098 - 10/06/2007 04:40 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: Roger]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
I don't know if you're being serious here Tony,

I was being serious to the point of: Vista running as non-LUA administrator is no more or less secure than XP running as administrator was. So if you ran XP as administrator all the time, then your Vista installation with LUA turned off isn't any less secure.

The only difference is that Vista lets you elevate to administrator from within a non-administrator session less painfully than XP did. And it adds the extra layer of protection even when running as administrator, and letting you elevate past that layer relatively painlessly. This is good, and should be taken advantage of to improve security above and beyond the security that XP offered.

But my point was that anyone who didn't care about any of this and simply ran XP as admin all the time, isn't making anything worse by turning off LUA on Vista. They're just as equally insecure as they already were.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299099 - 10/06/2007 06:06 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Quote:
Vista lets you elevate to administrator from within a non-administrator session less painfully than XP did

Ah. Cutting-edge 1973 technology.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#299100 - 10/06/2007 15:38 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Quote:
I was being serious to the point of: Vista running as non-LUA administrator is no more or less secure than XP running as administrator was. So if you ran XP as administrator all the time, then your Vista installation with LUA turned off isn't any less secure.


So why, in all the rush to build a "secure" OS called Vista did Microsoft not choose to make a LUA account the default? Clearly, Microsoft has a very good understanding of defaults, as they used defaults and forced bundling to win the browser war illegally in the late 90s. So why can't such passion for market share also carry over to the passion of making a better and more secure product? If it's not default, the majority of users out there won't be using it. And so even when Vista takes over the majority Windows market share from XP, my inbox is still going to be filled with spam from zombie PCs.

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#299101 - 10/06/2007 16:36 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: drakino]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
In the one Vista installation I've dealt with, an LUA account did seem to be the default.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#299102 - 10/06/2007 17:13 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: wfaulk]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
Quote:
In the one Vista installation I've dealt with, an LUA account did seem to be the default.


For the first account on the system, it's not. It appears to be on the surface with the UAC stuff on (allow/deny), but to the system, your account is an admin. UAC simply tries to put barriers at all the critical points to stop something bad from happening. If Microsoft misses a hole with the UAC barrier, malware could still exploit the entire system from the default account Vista creates. A true LUA account with UAC would not only see the allow/deny prompts, but also a username and password prompt to provide an admin password.

Now if you go to the User control panel and try to make a second account, the default selection is indeed in Standard User instead of Administrator. But this is the same going back to NT if I remember right.

"Run as administrator" with an admin account provides that false sense that there is actual user separation going on. Only LUA provides that.

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#299103 - 10/06/2007 17:15 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: drakino]
wfaulk
carpal tunnel

Registered: 25/12/2000
Posts: 16706
Loc: Raleigh, NC US
Ah. I got my TLAs mixed up.
_________________________
Bitt Faulk

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#299104 - 11/06/2007 05:48 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: drakino]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
why ... did Microsoft not choose to make a LUA account the default?


Compatibility and usability.

I'm not saying it's right (or wrong), so let's not go there, but it's the way that Microsoft thinks.
_________________________
-- roger

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#299105 - 11/06/2007 14:45 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: wfaulk]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
Quote:
Ah. I got my TLAs mixed up.

No you didn't. LUA and UAC are both names for the same feature. I think it was called LUA (limited user access) in development, and the release version of vista calls it UAC (use account control). But they're the same feature.

For the record, here's how it works:

- UAC (LUA) is turned on by default on a fresh installation of Vista.

- The UAC feature can only be turned off by someone with localmachine\administrator privileges. If that happens, it gets turned off globally for the machine (it's not a per-user setting).

- UAC can, if desired, also be enforced by group policy, so a machine joined to the domain could theoretically be prevented from turning this feature on or off.

- In terms of what UAC does for the security of the system, whether the logged-in user is "Localmachine\Administrator", "Domain\Administrator", "Localmachine\Joesixpack", or "Domain\Joesixpack" doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if the logged-in user has administrative privileges on the machine or not. UAC performs all of the same protections no matter what the privilege level of the current user is.

- The only difference made in UAC's performance depending on the user is this: If the user is an administrator-level user on that machine, then when UAC prompts for permission to let a program do something, it's just an OK button to click. If the user isn't already an admin, then it prompts for typed-in admin credentials before it will let the program past its block.

- Turning on UAC is not exactly the same as the difference between logging in as a normal user versus logging in as a machine administrator. Its main purpose is to allow you to be logged in as a machine administrator (thus getting the convenience of being logged in as admin), and yet still get the protections that you would have had if you were logged in as a normal user.

The jury is still out on whether or not it actually accomplishes that last task or not.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299106 - 11/06/2007 17:41 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
UAC and LUA are separate things. LUA stands for "Limited User Account" and the term has been around since the 2000 days at least. All it really means is an account without administrator access. 2000 started adding the "Run As" concept to allow for easier LUA usage. (Unix world, su equivalent)

UAC (User Account Control) is new to Vista, and was called UAC before the OS was renamed from the Longhorn codename.

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#299107 - 11/06/2007 17:49 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: drakino]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
Okay, I was going by internal MS names. Internally, they really did call UAC "LUA" and it really did get renamed during internal development. I suppose they renamed it specifically to avoid confusion with the existing industry standard term.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299108 - 11/06/2007 18:13 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
drakino
carpal tunnel

Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
The name change to UAC likely happened when it forked off into two separate things, as LUA (Limited User Account) is also a Microsoft term as seen by the user control panel in 2000/XP. Least-privilidged User Account is another name for the LUA acronym that most of the industry uses and as you said this is likely why the UAC name came around. Because they are separate, you can run Vista as a LUA, without requiring UAC to be on.

With all the codenames and internal only names we use here, I can see how such things could easily be confused inside a larger company. Would be interesting to see how many of the Windows developers still call it Longhorn after hearing that name for many more years over Vista.


On the topic of UAC, I just brought a new vista box online here at work, and instead of being annoyed the first second a UAC box appears, I'm trying to live with it. One problem with that though, it doesn't play nice with Synergy. I have turned off the "Use Secure Desktop for elevation requests", and Synergy still can't click on the popups, I have to use a hardwired mouse to do it. Any way around this, possibly with another remote keyboard/mouse solution?

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#299109 - 11/06/2007 18:31 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: drakino]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31596
Loc: Seattle, WA
I don't know anything about Synergy, but I have a guess as to what's going on.

In order for that UAC popup to be at all useful, they need to prevent most software from being able to ghost a click on the "Continue" button. If it were that simple, then a piece of malware could be written to do that, and get past UAC if a user accidentally runs it.

I'll bet Synergy falls into the "most software" category at the moment, and they'll need to upgrade it so that it can do whatever is necessary to get past that prompt. I'm not sure, from a third-party application standpoint, how that can be done. Perhaps it's a similar procedure as hooking into the GINA was (similar to what software like PC Anywhere had to do).

I know what you mean about trying to live with the popup. Mac OS X has a similar popup that I've learned to live with. The difference between living with the popup on the Mac, versus living with it in Vista, has two issues that get in my way:

1. All of the Mac software JUST WORKS whether the popup is there or not. Vista, on the other hand, has a few bits of software that won't work right unless I turn off UAC. You seem to have discovered one of your own just now. I have at least one MS internal tool that doesn't work with UAC.

2. On the Mac, if you want to just look at a control panel setting, you can do this without invoking the pop-up. Only when you want to change the setting do you need to supply administrator credentials. On Vista, simply opening the dialog box makes the popup appear, and you need credentials just to look at the setting.
_________________________
Tony Fabris

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#299110 - 12/06/2007 07:50 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: tfabris]
Roger
carpal tunnel

Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
Quote:
and yet still get the protections that you would have had if you were logged in as a normal user


This is not quite accurate Tony. What's going on is this:

When you log in as a member of the local Administrators group, Vista generates two access tokens for you, rather than the usual one. There's the original, and one with all of the dangerous bits taken out.

All of your applications run under the restricted token, which means that they cannot get access to the extra rights in the token.

If a program requires administrative privileges, either because Vista makes a guess that it does (because it's called setup.exe, for example), or because it contains a manifest that says that it does, then you'll get the elevation prompt which asks you to press Continue. If you press Continue, then the application is run with the full-monty token.

Some asides here:
1. You can write your application to explicitly say "I don't need admin privilieges, so don't guess", or to say "I'll take admin privileges if they're available, but otherwise, don't worry about it".
2. You can configure Windows to ask for your password again, rather than just the "Continue" button.
3. As Tom points out, this prompt runs on the "secure desktop", but you can turn that off, too.

If, on the other hand, you log in as a normal user, then, if a program requires admin privilieges (same logic as above), you'll get a prompt asking for an administrative user name and password, and that process will run under a different user account, rather than the same user account with a different token.

It's actually a pretty good scheme, but I'm not going to say there are no holes in it.
_________________________
-- roger

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#299111 - 12/06/2007 10:05 Re: Vista/XP/Kubuntu tri-boot help [Re: Roger]
furtive
old hand

Registered: 14/08/2001
Posts: 886
Loc: London, UK
Thanks for all your help, but I've decided I don't need it.

I can still get to XP by changing the boot device in BIOS, and have decided I don't need to access Kubuntu as I never used it anyway and only installed it to see what all the fuss was about.
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Rio Karma - now on ebay...

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