Dual boot problems

I just got a new bigger hard drive which I decided to make dual boot RH9 and WIN XP. This is my first dual boot install and my second Linux install so I am still very new to this. I had install CDs for linux before Windows so I installed that first. With RH9 as the only OS it worked fine but once I installed Windows Linux won't boot up. I used the linux install CD to set RH9 as the primary boot but it still won't. I thought the next step would be to boot off a floppy and start looking at the boot settings. I don't have a floppy drive though so I decided to make a boot disk on my other machine running linux that does have a floppy drive then copy that onto a CD. That didn't work either. What else can I do to get Grub to boot before Windows?

To make it easy on yourself, just install XP first and then linux. You will avoid some pain this way.

Eric.

Okay thanks. I had thought of that but I thought I would see if there was anything more eficient than a complete reinstall. I do remember reading that it was preferable to install windows first.

smartbootmanager will find any bootable partition, you can download a cd iso

I typically put grub on a floppy when installing Linux. This leaves the mbr for windows undisturbed.

Did u try booting with the rescue cd
chroot /mnt/sysimage
and then grub-install /dev/hda
or whichever your hard disk is

if you get the grub prompt then you can try manually issuing the commands in grub command mode and try to troubleshoot things

Thanks for the help. I just reinstalled linux. Now I just have to get my wireless working.

Either install grub again or edit boot.ini in windows from:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

to

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\boot\grub="Red Hat Linux"

Where the 1 and 3 are, make sure those point to the correct partitions.