Cannot dual boot, even after reading forums

I have gone through the entireties of at least three forum sites and noone has a fix that works for me. Someone suggested GrubED but I guess thats incompatible with gutsy still.

I have linux on my master IDE HDD, and XP on my slave.
when I use fdisk it recognizes them as SDA and SDB, any idea why?

I have tried at least a dozen different suggested combinations of entries:

title XP
rootnoverify (sd1,0) # or (hd1,0)
#somtimes with
map (hd1)(hd0)
map (hd0)(hd1)
#or with (sd0) etc
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

the master with linux on it I installed with the option to use the full disc, so it should be the generic setup. The XP one is also a single partition, thus (hd1,0) or (sd1,0).

when I have rootnoverify (hd1,0) in menu.lst and I try to boot to windows it gets to the next screen and hangs at "starting up...", if I put rootnoverify (sd1,0) I get "Error 23: Error while parsing number"

Can anyone shed some light on this? It seems to be abnormal as far as this problem goes...

apparently the newer kernels use libata driver which may recognise IDE drives as sdx drives aka sata or scsi drives.

2) your attempt is almost there

try

title xp
root (hd1,0)....assuming C is first partition on second drive
map (hd1,0) (hd0,0)
map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


there is no need for a boot line in the menu...but if you read my troubleshooter...you need the boot line to do it manually.

try it if you like.

3) only if that fails, change second line to
rootnoverify (hd1,0)

Hey thanks for your reply.

I typed in what you gave me verbatim and it reported "Error 11: Unrecognized Device String"

I decided to test removing the "map..." entries and it took me back to hanging at "starting up..." So the error must be there somewhere?

The slave with XP on it only has one partition, so I don't know what the problem could be... ubuntu boots just fine.

I tried editing it at boottime with the "boot" at the end, no difference.

simba,

1) did you try replacing the root (hd1,0) with rootnoverify (hd1,0) ?

2) in those 2 map lines there is exactly one space between the 2 bracket sets ie
mapspace()space()

3) if that fails....since you can get into ubutu pls study my troubleshooter.

press c

root (hd1,....press tab to find all of your second drive partitions.....grub may identify them as windows..or not.....if not....then you are forced to use the rootnoverify command
rootnoverify (hd1,0)

then issue each map command

then makeactive

then chainloader +1

then boot


only if you had to use (3) report each error on screen please.

but I am still expecting an answer for the others as well.

BTW did you read my howto?

4) continued...and if all that fail try this

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sus...ing-win2k.html

remove the makeactive line....he also had by mistake both a root hd line and a rootnoverify line.....

But do not be confused why his maps only show drives map hd0 to hd1 and the converse....its the exactly the same thing for partitions.

you can try it of course....but I prefer to name the c partition in the map command.

Maybe this is completely irrelevant, but maybe your device.map is not up to date? If you let grub write a new device.map, it will just name all drives hd0, hd1, hd2, etc., not sd1. But I guess that's not the problem here. I likewise had very little success in trying to get Windows to boot on my second drive. But maybe it is easier to just reverse the master/slave, and install grub on the slave, and be done with it. If you want to do that, be sure to first edit your menu.lst to reflect the new order, then install grub on the slave using this new menu.lst, then reverse the jumpers. Good luck.

Thank you aus, the problem was I didn't notice the space between the parts of "map...". Everything works perfectly now!