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Old 09-14-2005, 02:12 PM   #1
OneOfFive
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Registered: Sep 2005
Location: Wisconsin, USA
Distribution: Fedora core 2
Posts: 1

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Angry bootloader for two hardrives


Hello,

I have windows xp on my first harddrive and installed linux on a second one. When the OS option screen comes up and I select windows it says

booting winxp
chainloader +1
NTLDR is missing
press any key to restart
error loading operating system

I have gone back and tried to change the bootloader by reinstalling linux and choosing different bootloader options (install fedora on mbr, and on first sector, intall on xp on mbr or first sector....etc).

I was told that its looking for XP on the second harddrive.

How do you get the GRUB bootloader to recognize XP on the first harddrive.

I have been unable to see the first hardrive on the Linux GUI, all there is is floppy, cdrom and file system (I was hoping I could get into the windows files on the other HD and somehow change the boot.ini file).

I am brand new to Linux, been at it a little over a week now.

Partitioning my first harddrive for both linux and xp is not an option (I messed it up trying to parttion to many times and lost around 45 gigs).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
Old 09-14-2005, 02:24 PM   #2
tuxrules
Senior Member
 
Registered: Jun 2004
Location: Chicago
Distribution: Slackware64 -current
Posts: 1,158

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You would have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst file. menu.lst is also sometimes called grub.conf. Post the output of the following command here:

Code:
fdisk -l
Also post your grub configuration file. Since you use fedora most likely your grub config file is called grub.conf and is located in /boot/grub directory.

Tux,

Edit: I have the same setup you have (2 separate hd's for linux and winxp). I've installed grub on mbr of linux hard drive and then that drive is set to boot first from bios.
 
Old 09-14-2005, 06:56 PM   #3
AwesomeMachine
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Registered: Jan 2005
Location: USA and Italy
Distribution: Debian testing/sid; OpenSuSE; Fedora; Mint
Posts: 5,524

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If you installed MS Windows XP first, it loaded NTLDR and NTDETECT.com where they need to be. If you then installed linux, linux would install its own boot loader and relocate the windows files from hd(0,0) to whichever partition windows is on, and lead to it via the chainloader command. Here is how HURD identifies partitions. Grub is based on HURD's way of interpreting partitions. The first drive is 0. The first partition is 0. Therefore, the first partition, on the first drive, is hd(0,0). The second drive is 1. In a parallel IDE system, with master and slave, this would be the slave. In an SATA configuration SATA 1 is the boot drive. SATA 0 is also a primary drive, but must be configured as the boot drive specifically in order to boot from it. I am going to assume that MS Windows XP was installed first, on the master drive of a master/slave configuration, before linux was installed. I am also going to assume you installed linux on the slave drive. In this case, NTLDR and NTDETECT.com are in hd(0,0). This is the first partition on the master drive. Linux should be in hd(1,0). In linux, look in /boot/grub/menu.lst. Make this in there:

title windows
root hd(0,0)
chainloader +1

If you installed MS Windows XP after linux this will not work. In this case Windows is not configured with the linux boot loader properly. It has written to the MBR of the master drive, and screwed you. Windows is not tolerant of linux. Linux is very tolerant of Windows.

If linux was installed first, boot from the linux CD, or DVD and reinstall the boot loader. Use GRUB.
 
  


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