Configuring GRUB2 Bootloader
 

My PC has two hard drives. The master drive has Fedora 16 installed with the GRUB2 bootloader. The slave drive has Windows XP with a corrupted bootloader. GRUB2 always defaults to Fedora. How can I change this so GRUB automatically boots into Windows XP?

Take a look at file /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Scroll down to the menuentry items and count down to the menuentry for xp (counting starts at 0). Then, as root, edit /etc/default/grub and change to the number for the xp menuentry.

Then run update-grub to regenerate the grub.cfg with xp as the default OS.

This presumes the list is static - better to use the menu entry title for XP. Then it doesn't matter if its relative position "moves".

If I use the menu entry title, does that mean I won't have to configure anything when I install kernel updates?

Yes, so long as you update the default file as suggested, - don't touch the grub.cfg; it gets rebuilt at intervals.

OK, thank you for your help!

There is a way to change the grub default. Check out this blog. http://razor3dg3.wordpress.com/2012/...t-boot-option/