Hi,
I am brand new to the Linux world as in I installed the OS yesterday.

OK I have a problem I installed RedHat on my box as a partition of 5GB (not to big because at the moment no need) alongside Windows XP

My version of RedHat is 7.2 (I was told this would make it easier to learn) anyways when I ran the install it asked about a boot loader and not knowing what exactly it is I trusted the defults to lead me in the right direction. This was a bad choice.

It asked me where I wished to install the bootloader and what one I wanted. I selected GRUB and MBR as the install location (to my knowleadge) This seemed to not raise error
However, when I start my box now I get GRUB coming up with the choice to load RedHat but not Windows XP. As it is installed on MBR I never thought about this being an issue till I had to search the net for assistance to no avil.

My question (noting that I run NTFS filesys for XP) how do I boot both OS's now?

I read about editing the boot.ini file but this involves access to windows

Please help thanks,
SamLinux

Hi!

Welcome to LQ.org. You'll need to add an entry for Windows on grub. Boot into Linux and edit the file at /boot/grub/grub.conf, adding the following lines:

title=Windows XP
root (hd0,5)
makeactive
chainloader +1

This assumes that your Windows XP is located at /dev/hda6. Grub's config is a bit non-intuitive. The line "root (hd0,5) tells that Windows is on the first disk (hda = hd0) and on the sixth partition (hda6 = hd0,5). Just make the changes to wherever your WinXP is located and keep in mind that grub counts from 0, not 1

Best of luck!

add a subpart like this in ur grub.conf

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

hd0-primary master
hd0,0 - 1st partition of primary master

regards

Thanks so much for the fast reply both of you.

I assumed putting Linux on MBR was like OMG hard disk will die or something. Soon as I went to look for help I found an article and it was in all caps saying do not put linux on the MBR. So thanks for making me feel better again

Bring it on RedHat!

Thanks,
SamLinux

i have never faced a problem in installing Grub/lilo on the MBR

regards

grub is really more powerful than erstvile lilo. And more flexible too.

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