[Android General] wizzdome:
So it has been a hectic few days for me as I had alas managed to wipe my system reserved partition thinking that installing android x86 as multi-boot would actually boot windows for me. Wrong!!! My first poor encounter was the fact that when I had installed windows it had created the system reserved partition as ntfs... I had not realized this when attempting to install android x-86 as multi-boot. I will tell you the result, when booting it would appear to go to grub, however instead it just booted the first menu on the list without hesitation and gave no menu at all. To remedy this I had to use the windows 10 usb i had created for my initial install. I am still not sure how i managed to get it to boot the first time I think it may have just been dumb luck. When windows booted up i went to Disk Management (right click the windows menu and select from the drop down) where I then proceeded to delete the system reserved partition and reformat it fat32. At this point I was satisfied that android would point the out the windows boot, boy was I wrong. After installing Android x86 (_64 8.1 r3) I finally achieved the grub menu boot correctly. I also noted that when installing android x86 the only way it gave me option to add windows to grub was if i had installed without formatting first. (this can be done a few ways including just reinstalling much the same way you would dirty flash a rom on a phone) or you could use a tool to format the partition such as gparted or a linux live cd/usb. I suggest ext4. Oh wait my nightmare hadn't finished yet... Android x86 install had no problems at all (select partition to install(ext4)... do not format... install grub... yes to windows... yes read write... and then reboot) on reboot windows was in the grub menu and I selected it... oops there is no operating system!!! Well that is unsettling... ( I managed to get back into windows using the install media) and not so sure how. At this point i notice that my system reserved partition was now sda 3) So my next objective was to create a boot record for windows which could have been done easily from windows had I considered using bcdedit tool for windows. But since i knew that the partition was sda 3 I figured I could just point the grub menu to the correct drive... again wrong (there was still no boot mbr on that partition *sigh) Well I found that when i went into command line from the windows repair tool it would say I do not have permission to fixboot... wow nice job microsoft... after doing a bit more research I learned that the newer builds give this error when attempting to fix boot. I found a video on youtube which helped me alot but took quite a while to download the older working repair tool(installation media) but his video was fairly well put together. link here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRCyb7FzWFY). I followed his guide and this time with the repair tool that he shared in the description of his video, I was able to perform the fixboot (bootrec /fixboot) however one of his commands required the copying of bcd to the system reserved partition. The copy failed, however at this time running all the other bootrec commands seemed to go fine. So I exited command and went to the automatic startup repair, which to my surprise worked perfectly... (after a whopping 30 some hours of pulling my hair out of my head over this mess) And windows began to boot. At this point I gave my thanks to the poster of the video and shared my experience with his video in the comments below.) Now When windows booted up I downloaded the bcdedit tool. Personally I used the multi boot tool from this site (https://www.boyans.net/dual-boot-repair-windows-10.html) and selected repair mbr and boot record. This fixed my boot issue windows would boot normal at reset. However now my android was gone but thats okay.

At this point I just reinstalled the android x86 again over the same ext4 partition without formatting and added the windows to grub. This was perfect however when selecting windows did not boot. To fix this I had to edit the grub menu.lst and change the drive from hd(0,0) to hd(0,2) to point to the fat32 partition which had been somehow displaced to sda3. In order to do this I ran android in debug... when debug is running just hit enter and it give you a prompt... from prompt type without quotes "cd /mbr/grub" when the next prompt comes up you should be in the grub directory where the menu.lst is. Now type without quotes "vi menu.lst" this will take you into a text editor (note you can also change your monitors and resolution permanently in grub menu this way) using the arrow keys navigate to the line you want to edit, in my case the last entry which was windows entry when you get to where you need to edit hit the "i" key this will allow you to now enter and edit the text. After making changes hit "esc" to save changes type ":w!" then hit enter. To exit type ":q!" this will take you back to prompt. Now reboot your system and finally the results I had originally hoped for a multi-boot system with windows 10 and android. Now if you are attempting to do this and are looking for a guide to install I will make this just a little longer to make sure you dontt make the same mistakes I made.

1a) before you attempt to install a dual boot with grub... make sure your system reserved partition is fat32 if it is not you need to change it to fat32. as grub will not boot on ntfs partitions.

1b)you will need to have a blank partition, if you have spare room on the drive you can shrink your volume and create a new one. There are plenty of tools out there to format ext4 even from windows. Make sure you format it before installing. (if you are lazy like me you can format ext 4 from the installation, but there is a chance that you would need to reinstall again and choose not format to get the windows entry in grub)

1c)once your partitions looks the way you need and you have a working fat32 system reserved partition you are ready to move on. ( If you have to change a ntfs partition to fat32 I highly suggest you dont install anything until you have repaired the boot menu and tested it first to make sure it works)

2)create your install media... I prefer to use rufus as it is quick and easy, and I prefer the official android x86 as the 8.1 r3 is stable and works great, you can use whatever image you want though, lord knows i test newer versions as they come out. when you have rufus and the android x86 iso of your choice load rufus select your usb drive and select the iso with the browse button. then just hit start allow it to format and when it is done you can boot into your usb

3)To boot into your usb you may actually need to edit your bios and enable virtualization and make sure safeboot is not enabled, also you need a uefi system for x64 distros so if you have an older legacy bios you will need the x86 version instead or the system wont boot

4)When you finally get it to boot you will find the menu to use it as a live cd or install, select the install.

5a) You will now be asked where to install to. Pick the ext 4 partition you created for it.

5b) Now it will ask you to format choose do not format (again if you hadn't formatted the partition ext4 you may do it now, but you may have to reinstall and not format the next time to add windows to the grub menu)

6) You will now be asked to install grub answer yes, if you do not answer yes you wont be able to get back into your android partition again until you do.

7) Now it will tell you that it found a windows partition and asks you if you want to add an entry, select yes... if you do not you will have to make your own grub entry to get back into windows later or completely delete grub from the partition later.

8) Finally it will ask you if you want to make the system read write... select yes, if you select no i can not guarantee you will be able to install anything inside of the system.

10) The end... Installation finishes but do not click launch... instead click reboot. The reason for this is that I have noticed if you launch at the end of installation the grub somehow manages to disappear and you end up having to completely start over.

Enjoy your android x86 / windows multi-boot system.