Dual Booting and Chainloader
 

Hi all,

I am taking my first babysteps into Linux, yay! So first of all I'd like to say how happy I am with such a website as this one.


Now, on to the issue. I just installed linux on my machine. It has three HDD's, one a SATA with Windows XP, one a SATA to backup my XP stuff, and one IDE with Linux.

At the moment when I start my computer I get a menu which gives me a choice of windows, Linux (SUSE 10.01 btw), and Linux Failsafe.

However, when I select windows I get the following message: chainloader (hd1,0) + 1, and then nothing happens. I can still get into windows by going into the bios and selecting the windows HDD as the one to boot from first, but I would like to be able to just run windows from the GRUB menu (that is the grub right?).

Anywho, some help would be appreciated.

Cheers,

E

Can you post the contents of menu.lst file. This should be located here /boot/grub directory.



Peace V :my friend:

Hi there Cuiq,

Rofl. I just lol'ed because I discovered how to copy and past in linux ;).

Anyway, here it is:

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Sep 30 03:27:03 UTC 2006

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 vga=0x31a selinux=0 resume=/dev/hdb1 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
chainloader (hd1,0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb2 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume selinux=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd

Cheers,

E

Ok, try adding this

makeactive

this is what you have
try putting makeactive here
Let me know what happens.

Oh!, also you'll have to be root to make changes to this file.


Peace V :my friend:

Hi there again Cuiq ;)

I did as you suggested, but it did not work.

Now, when selecting windows on startup I get the following text in the upper left portion of my screen (rest black):

makeactive
chainloader (hd1,0) +1

Any other suggestions?

Cheers (and thanks for the time you're taking to help me)

E

Yes one more suggestion. I just noticed that your windows is hd1,0 which means that this also has to be added

map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

So then this is what it should look like



Peace V :my friend:

Hi Cuiq,

Thanks very much, it worked! Now I've got this dual boot system running I can start delving into Linux for real ;)

One more question though, if you're up for one more. What do those two lines mean:

map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)

It's just that what you said I should do worked (yay!), but I dont have a clue what I really did :)

Cheers, and again thanks very much for helping me out.

E

Hi Erev,

I'm glad things worked for you. I have windows installed on a second hard drive also.
However, I believe this command basically tricks DOS/windows into thinking it's on the first drive. I'm sure someone will correct me if that's wrong. But here's a link with a bit more information than I can offer. http://www.linuxselfhelp.com/gnu/gru...er/grub_4.html don't worry if it sounds like greek, as you learn linux this stuff will begin to make sense.

Oh, and you are very welcome :)


Peace V :my friend: