I am an ass....I have dual boot on a 30GB....Dell utils on partition 1. XP on part. 2, and linux on part 3, linux swap on partition 4. last night i shrank down the xp part. to make room for linux and then installed RH on the 3rd and 4th parts(new) and failed to make a boot part....so grub boots and only gives me the option to boot into linux. I do not have an XP rescue(thats the really dumb part) and now i need to get into windows for a driver for my wireless, not to mention my GF is gonna kill me because she has 1500+ mp3s in XP. please help me fix this.
I am not a total rookie, but i am to dual boot, and new hardware with linux. I am just extremely impatient and now i am paying dearly for it.

thanks in advanced

here is a copy of my grub.conf
# 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/hdc3
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdc3
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (2.4.21-20.0.1.EL)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21-20.0.1.EL ro root=LABEL=/ hda=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.21-20.0.1.EL.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (2.4.21-4.EL)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.21-4.EL ro root=LABEL=/ hda=ide-scsi
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.21-4.EL.img

and a copy of my partition table:
Disk /dev/hdc: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3648 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdc1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/hdc2 6 2628 21069247+ 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdc3 * 2629 3584 7679070 83 Linux
/dev/hdc4 3585 3648 514080 82 Linux swap

to add....does anybody know how i can fix this without windows, and without losing anything?

Add a section to your grub.conf along these lines:


Alternatively, you could always just mount your XP partition while booted under linux, and copy the files across from there (worth setting up regardless, as rebooting just to copy a few files soon loses it's charm).

Cheers,

mj

To your /etc/fstab, add a line such asand create a directory named /winxp for it to be mounted at. From there, you can then (if you so desire) right-click on your desktop, and Create new -> Hard disk, select the newly available mount point.

Cheers,

mj

Just a thought, but where did you install your hard drive ? It's odd that it's come up as hdc - if you do only have one, it would normally have come up as hda. Anyway, you may need to change the grub.conf rootnoverify line to (2,1).

how did you shrank this xp part? I mean if you made xp part smaller, added new part and theres been writing occured to this new part then theres not much hope.
If there'snt been writing then it's not very hard.

give overview of your partition table

# fdisk /dev/hda
and then 'p'

yes I shrank xp with partition magic 8....added an new part from new space created, and that is where linux now resides.

I have no idea why the harddrive was labeled hdc, it is the only hd in comp(a dell insiron 1100 laptop w/ toshiba 30GB hd)... I found it to be a bit bizarre myself.

an update...I managed to run XP again after editing the grub.conf file but after I did it screwed up the MBR somehow(maybe?) so that it no longer gave me grub but went directly to XP which my the way crashes at boot when it tries to run chkdsk which it cannot find. Then i get the new and improved blue screen of death. I reinstalled RedHat and all is fairly well....My usb mouse all of a sudden stopped working but that is another issue. But I still cannot get into XP and dare not try to reedit grub.conf as I did before because redhat enterprise is a monster distro and takes hours to install. Am I SOL?

XP may well try to 'fix' any partitions it can find when it boots up - the safest option, if you have the time, would be to create the partitions first, then install XP, then the Linux distro of your choice. Other than that, editing grub.conf shouldn't bring any new problems.