Comment #36 and #37 are what scare me:
http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/...?id=115980#c36

I haven't seen any reports of this particular issue with FC1. I do agree that its really fishy that if you're not changing the partition table, that *something* is choosing to muck with it.

Look at when this bug was opened. February 17th, with FC2t1. TEST 1!!!!! and the bug remained open. sheesh.

You're not the only one .. !! Even reinstalling WinXP won't do any good .. missing operating system .. and I went the hard way .. reformatting the whole bloody thing and went back to FC1 ..

The people that are having problems, why don't you post your partition scheme here (and computer specs) so the rest of us could see if we spot any problems to try to help.

I've had Red Hat installed since version 8, then version 9, then FC1 and now FC2 with either WinME, XP Home and now XP Pro and haven't encounted this bug. I did have to do the "fixboot" option once before when I was experimenting with a multi-boot that included Arch Linux but that was an easy fix.

rberry88

Hi rberry

Please look at my posts in another thread regarding my detailed settings. I still cant make it work!

The LBA setting change is not applicable for me due to the raid configuration, since my HD's with Windows XP are not on the primary or secondary IDE channels.

I would really appreciate if you have the time to look at it. If you need me to post my detailed settings again I am happy to do it.

Regards,
Bambino

FYI - my configuration is described in the thread:

grub wont boot windows on second hard drive

I to couldn't boot winXP after installing FC2, whats worse is i didn't checksum the disc 1 iso before burning it and so my install crapped out on the first disk. tried to go back to xp and i just got

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

thank god for knoppix, i was able to burn my important stuff to a cd before blowing away xp. I tried all the little commands it comes with; fixboot, bootcfg. Then i tried fixmbr, boy that was a mistake. It got rid of my bootloader problem but i ended up with this message instead

Error Loading Operating System

No amount of reformating(at least not the format the XP installation does) and reinstalling helped. Read up on doing a zero fill format but couldn't find any free programs that did it. Luckily my friend told me about a command in knoppix that performs this

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda <<<or hdb depending on your harddrive location

Just thought I'd share. Sorry it's late in the game.

Thx for your share.

My problem is not being able to boot Windows XP, but the problem is to have it done automatically by grub.

If I tell my BIOS to boot on the XP drives, it will load my XP correctly. But making grub do this from my Linux drive is the problem...


Regards,
Bambino

I'm the semi newbie so i apologize for the stupid question but is grub pointing to (hd1,0)?

Dont apologize, Im happy to questions and answers to solve my problem.

My grub file:

[root@localhost root]# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=1
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
title Windows
#map (hd0) (hd1)
#map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader --force (hd1,0)+1
makeactive
[root@localhost root]#

I have tried different things to make it boot my windows XP as you can see. When I select Windows from the grub menu at startup, it simply shows my commands and hangs there. I have tried with the makeactive before the chainloader command, and also using the map commands.

Any suggestions?

Here is my /boot/grub/menu.lst :

I have two hard drives (hdb=80GB & hdd=180GB) with WinXP being 1st on my 1st hard drive and Fedora Core2 right after it and Gentoo occupying half of my 2nd hard drive. When I installed Fedora Core I put Grub on my MBR and use it for my multiboot.

rberry88

This tells me that your WinXP partition is just fine, it seems like its the MBR that is messed up. And you tried using the WinXP install disc and entering recovery mode and at the command prompt you type "fixboot" and/or "fixmbr"??

rberry88

this may sound really dumb but....

Why dont you reinstall fedora, basically, boot the disks, whipe out all the linux partitions using disk druid, and then, create new ones, (/boot /, /swap and /home if you like) then install LiLo. This way we can narrow it down, if Lilo causes the same problem we know its disk druid messing with partitions, if all goes well we know its grub.


EDIT**
After reading though the bugzilla report it seem to me that it has notthing to do with grub or Lilo. I found this very interesting.



" Additional Comment #49 From Bill Moss on 2004-05-20 22:18 -------

Some experiments I have run suggest that the FC2 dual boot problem is
generated by the fact that Windows2K/XP and FC2 with kernel 2.6 are
using different values for disk geometry. I have a dual booted Dell
C600 laptop with Windows2K and FC1. Partition Magic reports the disk
geometry under Windows as 2432/255/63 and FC1 (/proc/ide/hda/settings)
reports it as 2432/255/63. I booted FC2 disc1 into rescue/read only
mode. FC2 (/proc/ide/hda/settings) reports the disk geometry as
(38760/16/63). If you install FC2 so that new partitions are created
during the installation, then the FC2 geometry will be used and your
will no longer be able to boot to Windows. If you do an upgrade, then
no new partitions will be created and you should be OK. If partitions
have to be created, they would have to be created on the Windows side
so that when you install FC2 you have a Windows compatible partition
table. I cannot take a chance on trashing my work computer, so I have
not verified these statements. As far as I can tell from user
comments, everyone who installed FC2 without creating a new partitions
during the FC2 install were OK. You can argue if this is a bug or a
feature, but there is no doubt that is has made life a little more
difficult for first time dual booters who need to create partitions
for Linux. This takes dual booting out of the “easy install” category."


Now i am thinking that if we created the /boot /root and /swap (and /home if you like) partitions using another program like Knoppix, Mandrake moves's Disk Drake or window's partition magic. and then installed FC2 i think it may work. I do not have FC2 yet as i have 56k so if someone could try this and report back that would help us verify what the poster i quoted is saying.

Thats whay I was thinking about doing, removing grub and installing lilo. Things is, I've never done it before. Has anyone got a HOW-TO, or can write up a quick tutorial for it. Would be greatly appreciated

im sure there is some command but the easiest way i can think of is to reinstall Fedora and just install lilo.

anyone know the command? Also what do you think of my edit from my post above?

I found a solution

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

this will finally boot my Windows