hi all,
I will tell the scenario.. I am having a p4 machine with 1 gb ram, 2 80 gb sata hdd.. i want to install linux Redhat Enterprise linux 4 in one hard disk and windows xp in another...
I installed windows successfuly... and after installing i installed Linux in the next hard disk... The problem is when the first booting priority in bios is set to the harddisk with windows... windows boots without showing the grub... And when the priortiy is set to the harddisk with linux, linux boots and it shows grub, with an option to boot from windows... but when i click the windows error comes
as
root noverify
chainloader +1...

but if i select linux i am able to boot to linux...

How could i solve this problem, i want to boot to linux as well as windows...

here is the 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 (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda9
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=2
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES (2.6.9-5.ELsmp)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.ELsmp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-5.ELsmp.img
title Red Hat Enterprise Linux ES-up (2.6.9-5.EL)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-5.EL.img
title Windows Xp
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
------------------------------------------------------------------------


and here is the fdisk -l entry

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sda1 x x xxxx f w95Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 * x x xxxx 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 x 9 xxxx 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 x 9 xxxx 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 x 9 xxxx 82 Linux Swap
/dev/sda9 x 9 xxxx 83 Linux


Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/sdb1 * x x xxxx 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 x 9 xxxx f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 x 9 xxxx e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sdb8 x 9 xxxx b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda7 x 9 xxxx b W95 FAT32


Plz help me to solve the problem

Thanking you

Viji

Can you please post the contents of
/boot/grub/device.map ?

Also, I'm not an expert on multi-booting, but isn't Windows supposed to be on the first partition (ie
the IDE master - sda)?

Furthermore, it's logical that, if you set your BIOS to boot from the first drive (with Win on it), it'll find the Windows boot loader and boot Windows XP. This boot loader, unlike Grub, is completely unaware of other OSs.
It may be possible to configure it for launching Linux, but that would probably be quite difficult.

Instead, you should have the grub boot loader installed on the hard disk you'll want to boot from. The grub boot loader can handle many flavors of OS and installations on multiple disks too. The fact that it doesn't start your Windows right now, is most likely a configuration issue.

yeah i will post the device map... but i set the boot priority to linux hdd, it boots and shows the grub, but when is select the windows option it gives the error,
root noverify
chainloader +1

The Bootloader goes on whatever drive that the bios thinks is the first one.
If GRUB is on the first drive, I don't think that you can chainload to a different drive without some additional GRUB commands (Check the GRUB manual on this one.

The conventional approaches include:
1. GRUB in the mbr of the first drive, Windows also on the first drive.
2. GRUB on a floppy
3. Windows boot.ini configured to boot Linux

Search in this site for "Saikee" (Doctor Boot). His sig has a bunch of links to various boot tutorials.

Slightly off-topic:
With two drives, I reccommend putting both OSes on the first one, and formatting the 2nd one FAT32 for data. In this way, Windows and Linux can easliy access the same files.
Extra space on dirve one can be used for backup, more data partitions, etc.

I had the same problem, found the answer as follows:

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

Because Windows expects to be on the first hard drive it will not boot properly when on the second, by using the map command it is given the impression it is on the correct drive and boots the system.

Hope this helps.