Everyone is probably getting tired of answering these dual-boot questions, so before everyone gets mad I'd just like to say that I've been reading tons of material on the subject but haven't found any solutions that will work. I'm trying to dual boot Redhat 7.2 on one hard drive (which is hooked up as my primary master) and windows 98se on another (I've tried hooking it up as the secondary master and primary slave but get the same error). When I get to the bootloader (grub) I set it up so that i have the option of booting Redhat and win98 (hdb1). Redhat works fine, but when I try to boot windows it goes to a black screen and says:

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

chainloader +1

then it freezes.

After that I've tried running windows using a windows boot disk, I've even unplugged the hard drive with Linux on it, but I get an error when I try to load windows:

VFAT Device Initialization Failed
A device or resource required by VFAT is not present or unavailable, VFAT cannot continue loading.
System Halted

If I don't use a boot disk and set bios to boot to the drive with windows it says: Invalid System Disk, Press any key to Continue, or something to that effect.

I've tried various setup options suggested, but can't seem to find any that work. Sorry to bother, but any help would be greatly appreciated!

Welcome to LQ.

I would advise that if at all possible, have Windows on hda...it doesn't like playing second best.

There is a set of options for Grub (and Lilo) to fool an OS into thinking that it's running on another harddisk, but I would seriously suggest that you swap them over.

A couple of links for you:

Linux+Win9x+Grub HOWTO

Multiboot with Grub MiniHOWTO

Hope this helps.

windows doesnt liked to be second or a slave to some other OS
you cant boot windows from a slave hard drive, it has to be on the master disk. you can fool around it by tweaking the lilo.conf

I am sorry I dont know howto do that, you can search in google.com , I found it once


good luck

manthram

OK, thanks for the help. Before I start rearranging my hardware, I was just curious as to what the "optimal" set up is. I have 2 hard drives and a CD-ROM. Should the two harddrives be on the same IDE cable (Primary?) or should I have one set up as a Primary Master and another set up as a Secondary Master?

At any given time, only one device can communicate on a given IDE channel, so for optimal device-to-device transfers:

Primary Master= 1st HDD
Secondary Master= 2nd HDD
Secondary Slave= CD-ROM

If you had a CD-RW as well, the optimum layout would be:

Primary Master= 1st HDD
Primary Slave= CD-ROM
Secondary Master= 2nd HDD
Secondary Slave= CD-RW

Connect your linux drive as primary master and your windows drive as primary slave. Then make your windows entry in your grub.conf file look like this:

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

ok, I've got the syntax for lilo, but I've got another problem. But first, for lilo.conf, mine looks like this:

boot=/dev/hda
prompt
lba32
compact
root=/dev/hdc1

image=/vmlinuz
label=Linux
read-only

other=/dev/hda1
label=Dos

other=/dev/hdd1
label=Win98
table=/dev/hdd
map-drive=0x80
to=0x82
map-drive=0x82
to=0x80

My hardware configuration is as follows:

hda: hda1 (for booting dos - yes, still needed)
hda2 (with hda5 for common data and preventing of loss of about 5MB of total hdd space)
hdb: cdrom
hdc: hdc1 - ext2 for linux - this is a 1GB disk
hdc2 - linux swap
hdd: hdd1 - 2GB for win98

The problem occurs when booting into 98, it sees too many drives. It sees hdd1 as c, hda1 as d, then hdc1 (guess) as e, on which it tries to scandisk on every bootup, and then hda5 as f and eventually my cdrom as g. My problem? Drive e *has* to go.

koningshoed
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There is only one God, and M$ is not it.