Problem after booting XP from second hard disk
 

Here is the situation. I have managed to boot XP from the second hard disk by configuring GRUB. But I'm facing another problem. After I boot into this XP in the second hard disk and then go into My Computer, I cannot see the drives (partitions) in the first hard disk. Its as if the first hard disk is not present. The XP in the second hard disk is only for games. What do I do?

This is the change that I incorporated in GRUB's grub.conf file...

map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

What is on the first disk? How many disks do you have? Do you have a linux distro, if so which one?

Larry,

I have 2 disks.

First Disk has...
Partition1: Windows XP 64bit
Partition2: Fedora 9
Extended Partition
Bootloader: GRUB

Second Disk has...
Partition1: Windows XP 32bit
Extended Partition
Bootloader: NTLDR (the one that windows installs)

Hi Edencraze,

Just a suggestion, why don't you put your two versions of windows on the first HDD, and put linux on second? Might be easier in the long run...

Someone else will have to help here, in XP there is a way to mount the disks by going to accessories then system tools and disk management or some place. I do not have a windows handy and it has been a while so any directions I give you may be mis-leading.

Thanks Larry...

Hi irishbitte,

Don't you think that installing the two Windows in the first hard disk will completely isolate me from booting Linux. Well windows thinks that it is the only operating system in the world. So I won't be presented with an option to boot linux.

Then again, if I boot from the second hard disk which will have linux, I might have to hide one of the windows partition while configuring grub. Say the first two partitions have windows. Then I need to do...
hide (hda0,0)
unhide (hda0,1)
to boot the windows in the second partition and
hide (hda0,1)
unhide (hda0,0)
to boot the windows in the first partition.

Let me know your view...

I'm not an expert on Windows, and haven't used XP 64-bit, though I dual boot with XP Pro 32 bit. Sometimes it seems like it's duel booting not dual booting, but I digress.. :)

Having said that, I would look in device manager and see if both hard disks show up and have their drivers loaded without error, then go to disk manager under administrative options in the control panel (or type diskmgmt.msc under Run..) and see what the partition setup looks like. You can assign drive letters to partitions if they're properly recognized from the Disk Manager.

I wouldn't change the disk setup/boot if you've got it working, and having two versions of windows on one HD can be a problem unless you hide the partitions, which would make accessing the other partition difficult, which was the whole point, wasn't it?

I don't use xp but I second Larry Webb's idea. There was something called computer management (?) in system tools or the Control Panel which should be able to resolve this problem.

Installing your windows partitions on the first disk and Linux on the second would not be a problem. All you have to do is boot from Grub and install the Grub Stage1 file to the mbr of disk 1 and chainload xp with ntldr. The rest of the Grub bootloader would be on the second disk but would still be able to boot windows.

Also, I hope the entries from your post (below) are typos because there would be no 'a' in any grub entry.
hide (hda0,0)
unhide (hda0,1)

Posting the output of 'fdisk -l' and your 'grub.conf' file might help but I think this is a windows problem and will likely be resolved by using windows tools.

Here is a tutorial that explains your situation and a lot more. But you are on the right idea. Scan this and see if the part he talks about install two windows to one hd and hiding one.


http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showt...hreadid=147959

The first HDD that WindowsXP can't see and that you have Linux installed on, what filesystem is on those partitions? If it is ext2/3 or something other than VFAT then Windows won't show it as it doesn't support those filesystems.
If you go into disk management (start-->run-->compmgmt.msc) you will likely see the disk but with a partition scheme that is foreign.
If need to share files between the two, I would suggest a 3rd partition somewhere that is formatted vfat or even NTFS. Linux and Windows can read those.

Thank you all... Your previous posts have been very helpful... especially yancek and Larry Web for pointing me to the source of the problem. But I have another question...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is the output of fdisk -l...

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x4ecf4ece

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 5222 41945683+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5223 13055 62918572+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 13056 19457 51424065 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 13056 13068 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 13069 13199 1052226 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xbdb291bd

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 3916 31455238+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 3917 19456 124825050 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 3917 19456 124825018+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

*********************************************************************************************

This the grub.conf settings...

# 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 (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda5
default=0
timeout=12
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
password --md5 $1$a163.Qm2$NO8SIzRKluGqPrRAl/nMv0
title Fedora (2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64 ro root=UUID=27f14f43-0c94-46bc-a1a9-edde2a6936b3 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.25.4-30.fc9.x86_64.img
title Fedora (2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64 ro root=UUID=27f14f43-0c94-46bc-a1a9-edde2a6936b3 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.x86_64.img
title Windows XP x64
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title Windows XP for Games
map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now what if I wanted to have the following setup done.
* Windows XP x86_64
* Windows XP
* Fedora 9
installed on the same drive and keep the other drive to store information only.

Can you help me configure my computer?