I have just installed fedora 3 core onto my hp paviallion t660.uk (pentium 4) machine and now when I try to boot into xp, I get the "HP system recovery" kicking in and I cannot get past this to run xp. Not only this, but the hp recovery does not work (in itself) anyway.

Grub works fine and boots linux with no problem.

In the past, I have installed many versions of linux (from RedHat6.0 , 7.2, 9, fed3) on many versions of win95, win98 and xp machines and have never experienced this problem before.

It seems that HP have replaced the MBR with some bespoke code which chains to xp if it considers all is well (which - in my case - it is not).

All I want is to kill the hp recovery 'software' so that xp boots.

But how ?

sounds like grub recognized the hp recovery partition and created a boot entry for it, but it didnt recognize the windows partition, probably because it is ntfs.

you will have to manually edit the grub configuration to create a boot point for the partition that windows is installed on. if it is a stock hp install then i would guess that the partitions will look like this:

hda1=hp recovery
hda2=windoze
hda3>=linux partitions made by FC

easiest way to check is, from a command line, run:
cat /proc/partitions
that will list what partitions are recognized by your system.

Thanks for swift reply.

My partitions are :

hda2 = FAT32 hp recovery
hda1 = NTFS (WinXP)
hda4 = linux swap
hda3 = ext3 linux

I had tried editing the grub boot (manually during boot) for rootnotify , but the only ones which work are : hd0,0 ( which goes straight to hp recovery) & hd0,2 (=linux) which works. The others give an error (hd0,1), (hd0,3).

I guess that (hdann = hd0,nn + 1), but due to my lack of knowledge/experience in the bootloader realm, I'm unable to relate hd0,0 etc to hda1 or whatever. But, I'm guessing that what I've already tried simulates your approach.

if fdisk which partition/s are set active?

I have copied fdisk output and the grub.conf.

[root@isis grub]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 10337 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 690 8257 57214080 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 * 1 689 5208808+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda3 8326 10337 15210720 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 8258 8325 514080 82 Linux swap

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@isis grub]#

[root@isis grub]# cat grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,2)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda3
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667smp)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-1.667smp.img
title Fedora Core-up (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

well i use slackware which uses lilo, so grub config doesn't make much sense to me.
fdisk shows the hp recovery partition as active, that is what the * is for, so first i would set the windoze partition active. see if that works.
i believe fedora has a gui that can help configure grub

If I try (hd0,0) the error I get is :

<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll is either missing or corrupt.

(I guess 0,0 is the one you think I should try for the direct ntfs xp partition).

i just googled this:
http://pcpitstop.invisionzone.com/in...owtopic=102530
looks like you might want to try changing the system id on the windoze partition to 7
(i'm not sure if this will preserve the data on that partition)

You want help, we need correct data. Post 3 makes no logical sense, and is contradicted by post 7.
Error messages in the initial post generally gets things going earlier.
Yes, the grub.conf should be updated to (hd0,0) - not that it'll help in this case.

The hal message indicates the chainloading is working as designed, and the boot sector record in the XP partition has been found. The hal.dll issue is generally a (hardware) vendor issue - HP are probably using an old version for their tools, rather than keeping up to date. Have a look on microsofts site - you might be able to recover this depending on what is on the disk. Usually you'd use the (M$oft) install CD, but I guess you don't have one.

You might ultimately have to restore the HP environment, then install grub to your (Linux) root partition, and use ntldr to boot Linux. Bit messy, but eminently do-able.
I've seen a document in the past on non-destructively restoring HP systems from the "recovery" partition - google should find it in need.

My XP boot is now working nicely by bypassing the HP recovery partition.

A big thanks to syg00 and Finlay.

I did the following.

1. Made hd0,0 bootable (using fdisk in linux).
2. Changed grub to boot hd0,0.
3. I changed the boot.ini file to use partition(1) instead of partition(2).
4. Changed the id of hd0,0 to '07' (HPFS/NFPS) (again using fdisk in linux).

Other notes.

1. Changing the system id didn't harm the data on the drive.
2. To edit the boot.ini I formatted a floppy on another xp machine and used the xp boot file from here : http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm : section "XP quickboot diskette" (I used a usb floppy drive). This enabled me to at least boot the machine into XP so that I could access the ntfs filesystem and edit the boot.ini
3. Leaving the partitiontype set to hidden (17) resulted in an apparently famous autochk error.

Today I also received my now redundant 2cd recovery set from HP which cost me £29.95.

good to hear it is up
i purchse HP for my work PCs, first i did on my workstation image is remove the hp recovery partition, actually i simply wipe the drive and install XP fresh without all the HP memory eating programs

yes i would like to run linux on the workstations, but as a dental group we need to run dental software, and there isn't any written in java or a language that will run natively on linux.