Dual-booting: GRUB on the /boot partition instead of the MBR doesn't work for me
 

OK, I know there are many threads out there on this topic, but all seem to conclude that you should install grub on the MBR.

I'm trying to dual-boot Fedora 10 and Win XP. Windows was already installed and I created a small 100MB partition before the Windows partition for the linux /boot partition. During the install, I opted to put GRUB at the start of this boot partition as I would really prefer to leave the MBR untouched. I tried to install first with Linux as the default OS for grub and then later with Windows as the default, but the result is the same.

When I reboot after a successful install, Windows starts up automatically. There's no menu from which to choose Fedora.

Please help!

If installing grub on the /boot partition instead of the MBR never works, why is it even an option in the install procedure?

Why not just put grub on the mbr, like a majority of users. It almost never causes a problem, and using an XP disk, or even th Super grub disk, to clear the MBR, isn't that difficult. I've also used Ubuntu Live CD's to reinstall grub on a couple of occasions...

IGF

Now that won't work. If you boot GRUB anywhere but on the MBR, you have to chainload it from another bootloader - which can be the GRUB installed to the MBR by another Linux distro or the windows bootloader. Assuming that it will work with a default windows install, no, that won't work at all for a very simple reason: when your system boots, it reads the first bytes of your hard drive(s); if there is nothing there to tell it that it needs to look elsewhere as well, then it really won't. The whole point of having GRUB in the MBR (or editing the windows bootloader - something that few like to do) is that it will point your machine to the proper location on the hard drive to boot Linux.

Ok, thanks. If I have to choose between letting Linux tamper with the MBR or tampering with the windows bootloader manually, I guess MBR it is....