Grub - XP won't boot

Ok so im a real newb with this being my first install of linux. I have my system on raid0, i belive (its were the raid slots are just extra ide slots). fedora is on one raid controller and windows xp is on the other. i installed grub as the boot loader and when the grub screen appears i have two choices: fedora and windows xp (i changed the title as it used to be dos). Fedora boots up very nicely without any problems. windows xp on the other hand spits out its grub configuration:

rootnoverify(hd1,0)
chainloader +1

and beeps at me until i reboot the machine. fedora is on hd0 and windows is on hd1, so i have no idea why XP won't boot. any help would be appreciated.

thanks,
steegs the

heh...same problem here...let me know if u find a solution.

oh yes, and if i pull out the drive that fedora is on, then xp boots like it did before i put in a second hd with fedora on it.

It looks like GRUB doesn't know how to boot XP from a RAID array. FWIU, you have two discrete RAID controllers in your box, both doing RAID 0. One controller has Fedora and GRUB, and the other has XP. I'm assuming that the Fedoran RAID array is part of your motherboard's southbridge, correct?

Could you post the output of 'fdisk -l' for XP drive?

Windows does not like being second.
Have you tried putting the winXP drive as the primary HDD and installing GRUB in the MBR of the winXP drive.

TheOneKEA - I have a promise chip on my MB, i belive that is what gives me the two extra. i have a via kt333 chipset. If i am wrong please let me know.

dorian33 - where should i be typing this...ima newb.

Mathieu- I looked around for instructions and the best i found was at

http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/l...-commands.html

stating :

"install <stage-1> <install-disk> <stage-2> p <config-file> — Installs GRUB to the system MBR. This allows the GRUB interfaces to come up when the system is rebooted.
Warning
The install command will overwrite any other information in the MBR. If executed, any information (other than GRUB information) that is used to boot other operating systems, will be lost.

Make sure to have the proper knowledge before executing this command. "

which doesnt help much at all as it does not say what "<stage-1> <install-disk> <stage-2> p <config-file>". Please help the newbmaster out as it just took me 20 minutes to make a boot disk. (typos galore)

thanks
steegs

When WinXP is installed, it creates a boot.ini file in the root of the WinXP system partition. This file contains a reference to the "index" of the drive and partition is should load from. You'll have to edit that file if you want to boot back into WinXP, because (it sounds like) your fedora installation is now on the primary harddrive.

Sample boot.ini file:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect


Now you'll have to change disk(0) to disk(1) and you'll be fine. If that does not work, try the multi(0) to multi(1). These refer to the controller, then the disk number on that controller, rdisk is used for SCSI, and partition. All indexes start at 0 except for partition, which start at 1 under Windoze.

And finally, if you're not able to edit that file, you can go to another WinXP computer and copy the following files onto a clean floppy disk, then boot from the floppy and *voila!* you'll boot WinXP.
NTDETECT.COM
ntldr
boot.ini <---- create your own from the above sample and edit it.
IO.SYS
MSDOS.SYS

Hope that helps.

possibly some helpful information: I used to run this machine with one HD that had just windows installed on it. I wanted to give linux a try so I gutted a machine and fed the HD to this one. Once I installed linux, win wont boot from grub.

Zargoth123,
I played with it for a bit. First I took out my linux HD, made a boot disk with the files you told me and I was unable to boot. it gave me some bad .dll error. I changed my boot.ini to:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS <--- this needs to be windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

then I was able to boot to windows via the floppy with only 1 HD in. next i changed the boot.ini to have every configuration possible(of multi, disk, and rdisk) with just the numbers 0 & 1. I also stuck in the linux hard drive. booting off the floppy i went though different configs until i was able to boot with:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional"

hot damn i can now at least boot to windows without having to take the linux hd out. so thinkin i was good to go i changed the boot.ini under the root of windows to:

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

restarted and choose windows in grub. )(#@$_ it still sat there displaying:

rootnoverify(hd1,0)
chainloader +1

So that wasn't the problem, but im sure it would have been. Thanks for help.

I think it may have something to do with grub. Im not conviced that grub is ever starting windows.

Is there any more information anyone needs? Ill be more than happy to give it up.

Here is my grub.conf file:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdf2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdf
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hda=ide-scsi rhgb
initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

thanks
steegs

windows is bad engineering.

google has the answer.


Anyway. I searched on google for grub.conf. i don't know why, as i had search on google for eveything but that last night. so this is what the windows part of the grub.conf has to look like:

title Windows XP
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
boot

from site:
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/forum...opic.php?t=803

so after i do that i try to boot to windows and it gives me the hdl.dll error BS. I boot to windows using the floppy i made and change the boot.ini under window's root to:

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

even though thats not true. restarted, chose windows out of grub and bam, it booted. so windows apparently has to think its on the first hard drive or else it wont boot. also it has to be lied to from the boot.ini file. how does that work?

thanks for all the help folks. much appreciated.