Bug 786995

Summary:	grub2 makes WindowsXP unusable
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Bogdan Costescu <bcostescu>
Component:	grub2	Assignee:	Peter Jones <pjones>
Status:	CLOSED NEXTRELEASE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	15	CC:	dennis, mads, pjones
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2012-04-17 21:56:23 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Bogdan Costescu 2012-02-02 20:52:01 UTC

Description of problem:

Hardware: Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo Mobile U9200 laptop

When using grub2 as a bootloader to boot WindowsXP (SP3), the keyboard becomes unusable - pressing keys has no effect. Mouse/touchpad works until the first keypress after which it becomes as well unusable. Connecting a USB keyboard/mouse doesn't change the behavior. Power button is the only one which functions well, producing a soft-shutdown. When booting F15, everything works fine.

grub boots WindowsXP (SP3) just fine, this dual-boot config has worked for the past almost 4 years with whatever Fedora version was current.

Note: this happens with both F15 and F16. I have downgraded to F15 because here I can use grub as the main bootloader and grub2 only for testing.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

grub2-1.98-3.fc14.i686

How reproducible:

Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. requires WindowsXP installed
2. install grub2
3. boot from grub2 the WindowsXP partition
  
Actual results:

Keyboard becomes unusable in WindowsXP, mouse as well after the first keypress.

Expected results:

Keyboard continues to function, mouse continues to function together with keyboard.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Mads Kiilerich 2012-04-17 18:57:37 UTC

(In reply to comment #0)
> Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
> 
> grub2-1.98-3.fc14.i686

Really?

Only the latest grub2 in f16 would be kind of interesting, but I guess the only chance to get a fix is to test with the version in f17. That is close to the upstream development version and they might be interested in investigating and solving the issue.

Comment 2 Bogdan Costescu 2012-04-17 21:56:23 UTC

(In reply to comment #1)
> Really?

Really. The bug was clearly marked for F15 and this is the latest grub2 version available for F15 which is still supported. I've also indicated that it happens with F16. One thing which I forgot to mention was that F16 was up-to-date at the time the bug report was filed - including the grub2 version.

> Only the latest grub2 in f16 would be kind of interesting, but I guess the only
> chance to get a fix is to test with the version in f17. That is close to the
> upstream development version and they might be interested in investigating and
> solving the issue.

Thanks for the suggestion. I have updated grub2 to the package

grub2-1.99-19.fc17.i686

which seems to have solved the problem. To be clear: this is still F15, only grub2 was updated; the update also obsoleted grub, so now the only bootloader present is the F17 grub2.

Hopefully by the F17 release this won't be broken again... As I have found a workaround, I set the status to closed and, given the interest so far, with "wontfix". If more data is needed, please reopen.