Hi,
I've just installed debian for first time and its sarge r1. I've also installed Windows 2003 on the same harddisk. During installation the installer correctly detects a Windows systems and advises me to install grub on MBR. But when I do so, after rebooting the grub refuses to load any OS. So after 2 or 3 tries I installed grub on the root partition and used "bootpart" to configure ntldr to boot debian through ntldr. Any ideas why grub is failing? Grub installed on MBR used to work fine with Mandrake 10.1 or the previous suse 9.1.

Do you have more than one hard drive? In my experience, both Debian and Ubuntu have problems installing Grub on multi-drive systems. What message are you receiving?

Yes, I've got two harddisks on my comp. But both Windows and Debian have been installed on primary harddisk. So it shouldn't really matter!

Can you specify the MBR on which harddisk that you installed your grub?
You may also check it out in your machine's bios, which harddisk is set to be the booting one.
If so, you can add the following in your menu.list file:

map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

Just give it a try. :-) Success!

I did not get your first question. What do you mean by specifying the MBR?
Since I get the grub screen where I can choose the OS, so I believe the grub is installed on the boot harddisk.
Anyhow I'll try ur suggestion. Cheers.