Dual boot GRUB problem
 

Dear ppl,
I have dual boot in my comp. FC4,Win XP. I had some
problem with my XP. So i wanted to repair it. So i
tried to boot from the windows CD. But unfortunately
it didnt work.
I got this problem,

Press any key to boot from CD...
then,
Setup is checking your hardware configuration....

After this i didnt get the usual blue screen where it
asks to install XP...but got a blank screen. But this
windows cd worked fine in my friends' comps. And Other
Live cds like (Ubuntu live cd) works fine in my comp.
So what i did was i made my hard disk a slave in my
friends comp..and then reinstalled XP in my C:\. now i
brought it here and connected.
But i get an error if get into windows XP in the grub
loader.

here are my grub.conf and df -h outputs
grub.conf:

title Fedora Core 4
root (hd0,7)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro
root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

/etc/fstab :

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hdc9 9.7G 3.7G 5.6G 40% /
/dev/hdc8 99M 13M 82M 14% /boot
/dev/shm 244M 0 244M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/hdc11 12G 900M 9.7G 9% /home
/dev/hdc1 5.0G 1.5G 3.6G 30%
/mnt/system
/dev/hdc5 12G 2.0G 11G 17%
/mnt/academ
/dev/hdc6 12G 6.8G 5.3G 57% /mnt/soft
/dev/hdc7 23G 17G 6.6G 72% /mnt/media

where /dev/hdc1 is my c:/ (XP installed)

Now i have some qns..?
Why does the Cd give a blank screen output?
Now how do i manipulate my Grub.conf?

Regards
Harish

If you haven't connected your CD drive and the hard disk correectly then the hardware fault might just give the reported erroneous or unreliable CD reads. You did say you set a hard disk to slave. Your partition scheme indicated that you have only one disk and so the hardware change could be an unnecessary complication. If the hard isk was set as a slave then your CD drive must be a master hda and the hard disk should have been called hbb but it doesn't.

Your hdc partitions suggest that your hard disk is now connected as a MASTER of the second IDE cables! So which one is the slave?

I couldn't understnad your question of how to manipulate Grub.conf either. You edit this text file just like everybody does. Is this the answer you sought or you could have meant how to edit Grub to boot your FC4. Unfortunately you gave no indication of FC4 is in trouble or reported any error. So FC4 could be healthy and bootable.

We also do not know if you want to fix XP or just the FC4 or both.

I m sorry if i have been misunderstood. I made my harddisk a slave in my friend's comp to install XP in it, as i wasnt able to do that in my comp. Now my hardisk is back in my comp.i have only one hard drive(hdc).
My Fc4 works fine. The problem is with XP.
To manipulate i meant just editing.Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards

Make the XP partition bootable. Probably no need to change anything else.

If your want to restore XP's MBR and cannot use the installtion CD then booting to a DOS floppy and type fdisk /mbr will achieve the same thing.

Before you restoring XP's MBR, thereby at a cost of nuking FC4's Grub, you should save FC4's Grub into a floppy so that you can boot FC4 with a floppy later on.


To Save FC4 Grub onto a floppy you log in as root to FC4, pop in a floppy and type

grub-install /dev/fd0

syg00's suggestion of making XP partition bootable can also be achieved by adding

makeactive

before the last line of FC4's /boot/grub/menu.lst.

GRUB and LILO always conflict with Windows. And GNU GRUB is not so robust, causing many problems during boot.

So try GRUB for DOS please. It is a cross-platform boot loader based on GNU GRUB. The GRUB.EXE can be started from DOS/Win9x; and GRLDR can be started from BOOT.INI of Windows NT/2K/XP/2003; and even more, the GRUB.EXE can be started from LINUX via the KEXEC tool.

By using GRUB.EXE or GRLDR, you don't have to touch your MBR. It is the safest way coexisting with DOS/Windows.

You needn't install GRUB for DOS. Just run GRUB.EXE from DOS, or append a line of "C:\GRLDR=START GRUB" into your BOOT.INI(restart and select the "START GRUB" menu item), that will do.

Download GRUB for DOS here: http://freshmeat.net/projects/grub4dos/

There is a fat12grldr.img file with the GRUB for DOS release. You can create a GRUB bootable floppy with this fat12grldr.img file.

Or, you can just copy GRUB.EXE to your DOS floppy and run GRUB.EXE to enter the GRUB environment.