Hey guys,

So I'm dual booting a machine with XP and Ubuntu. However, whenever I just turn on the computer it goes straight to XP but when I reboot or do anything after wards, then the GRUB menu shows up. The main hard drive (windows) is a SATA and the second hard drive (Linux) is an IDE set to slave. Any ideas as to why this would happen?

Thanks guys!

Do you have the boot order changed in your BIOS? This did some funny things here so that I had to change it to get GRUB working as intended.

My current boot order is: Floppy, Cd-Rom, then hdd0. I tried changing it to hdd1 but that didn't work. Also I tried changing the setting "Boot Other Device" to enabled and disabled and that didn't seem to work. Should I try setting the IDE driver to master instead of slave?

Thanks for the reply!

I have a similar setup - XP is on a SATA drive and Kubuntu on an IDE drive. I put grub on the IDE drive and boot that drive first (boot order in BIOS). That way if something happens to the Linux drive, I just change the boot order to boot the SATA drive first and windows is none the wiser. The key thing this requires is for grub to make windows think it is on first drive

Here's an excerpt from my menu.lst file in /boot/grub - remember, grub is installed on the IDE drive

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

That should do it

I am not sure about master/slave settings -- I can only tell that I have both set to master or "cable select", but both are recognized as masters. My BIOS's boot sequence seems to put IDE (hdc in my setup) higher than SATA (sda). What looks your /boot/grub/devices.map like? It didn't matter how I changed the boot order in my BIOS, Grub set hdc as my first harddisk to hd(0).
No clue about Windows entry

Thanks for the replies guys!

My /boot/gurb/device.map

And from my /boot/grub/menu.lst

In my BIOS the boot orders only go from hd0 up to like hd3. It's a pretty old motherboard, got it when sata was just starting off. I could have overlooked something in the BIOS but I didn't see anything.

Any idea on how to check what drive GRUB is installed on? It's been awhile since I installed it that I forgot which hard drive it is on (might be the SATA one with Windows on it).

Thanks guys!

You might have hit it with the drives - don't know how old your MB is but mine is a couple years old. My Award BIOS has, under "Advanced BIOS Features" a selection for "Hard Disk Boot Priority" where I could choose between drives or "Bootable Add-in Cards". The first, second, and third boot devices is listed separately on the "Advanced Bios Features" page and only shows Hard drive as a selection separate from optical, floppy, etc.. From my research at the time, it seems most MB's will boot the IDE controllers before any SATA controller (I assume you are using a SATA controller and not a SATA/IDEconverter connected to the IDE controller) but look around for a similar setting.

Your cold boot going to Windows without GRUB suggests your system is booting the SATA drive first unlike for most MB's (and grub is not there). But why your system picks up Grub on a "hot" reboot is inconsistent unless for some reason, it then boots the IDE drive first (Your Grub menu.lst suggests the IDE drive is booted first and that Grub is located on the IDE drive or hd0). I don't know why the boot order would change between a cold boot and a restart but that's the only thing that makes sense to me - maybe it has something to do with the IDE drive being set to slave. If it's the only drive on the controller, use the end connector on the cable and set the drive to cable select or master as suggested. Don't know if any of this helps - good luck!