My problem; I have installed Freespire onto one of my Hard Drives, and have WinXP on "c: Drive". I installed Grub into the root of my installation, used "dd " and created the freespire.bin file, copied it into the root of C:. My NTloader shows on boot the options to boot WinXP or Freespire, but when I choose to boot freespire, I get GRUB in the upper left corner and nothing else, just hangs there. If I use the CD, boot the the command line and enter the grub commands as follows;

GRUB root (hd2,0)
GRUB chainloader +1
GRUB boot

I then get booted into the installed verson of Grub on HD2,0, and can boot into the OS.
How do I fix this so I can boot either without using the CD?

System info:
P-4 2.53ghz 1.0GB ram ATI AIW 8500 video card
Abit vx-7 mobo w/ VIA880 chipset, onboard VIA sound and RHINE II ethernet
Drives in order of install;
hda 40gb NTFS and fat32 primary-ide master
sd0 cd-dvd rom primary-ide slave
sd1 cd-dvd-RW secondary-ide master
hde 40gb fat and NTFS primary-promiss-ide controller master
hdf 60gb reiser 3 ,fat32,swap primary-promiss-ide controller slave

the grub configuration sees my drives as;
hda=HD1
hde=HD0
hdf=HD2

Any thoughts or ideas why Freespire sees my drives in a different order than any other install I've done? And how can this be corrected?
Thanks,

Since you see GRUB, I simply presume you got all the ntloader's parameters right (like rdisk and the rest).

Well, you are in the command mode of GRUB when you see something like "GRUB>" there. You could try and simply type the commands in there and have it start too.

Usually that is done from the commands in file /boot/grub/menu.lst so open that in an editor of your choice and add them to the Freespire-stanza. If you feel unsure, show the entry of the file here and we take it from there...

Never repair a working system -- though it works not yet. You have a mixture of non-standard hardware as controllers and devices (hdx <-> sdy). I'd guess it comes from there. It could also be that GRUB sees it differently from Freespire. You'd better test it from there too.

I think that you should allow freespire (Linspire)to do the setup for you. Use the XP disk to clear out your MBR. @ the command prompt type: <command> it will give you a list of commands. I believe the command you need is <clearmbr>. Something like that.
Use the freespire ISO and install the system. Choose the: <take over entire hard drive> Highlight the hard drive that you want to install on. XP is on hda (cD:is hdb.
The freespire disk will install grub in the MBR of the C: drive. The disk will also format your D: drive and then install Freespire.
When you restart, you will see a list of selections that includes Freespire and XP. freespire is the default. Have fun.
May I suggest that if your just playing around with Freespire, do this on another computer.

I would like to comment on bios boot order issue

can you tell me how you verified the boot order with hda not detected as hd0?

2) can you report how your bios boot order is pls

I suspect your bios boot order as pci card b4 normal ide drive

I could be wrong but more info is required.

thanks

I didn't want the entire drive taken over,as I have info used in windows also stored on this drive.

Thanks everyone for trying. Gave the freespire da-boot.
I have used several distros of various versions, and never had this kind of problem with Grub before. I believe it to be an issue with Freespire itself, it even listed my drives/partitions in a different order. So trying Kubuntu now and don't like it either, too simplistic and doesn't give root access very well. Thanks.

Sorry to hear about your Freespire problems, I had hopes of being able to recommend it to future "Redmond refugees".

BTW, & you probably know this already, SimplyMEPIS is also Debian based, plus there's always the original -- Etch or Sarge.