Dual Boot RH8 and WinXP On two harddrives.
 

I have been trying to dual boot but cannot get Windows XP to boot. My system has the first drive as being Red Hat linux 8. The second drive is Windows XP (NTFS). When I loaded Linux the second drive was not installed. After Linux was installed I connected the drive. I then went to the grub.conf file and currently have this:

title Windows XP (Home Edition)
rootnoverify=(hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

The other file I changed was the device.map and added the second drive the file looks like this:

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb (The line I added)

The grub comes up on reboot with all the right selections but when I choose XP it give me the info of my grub.conf for the XP section. Then nothing happens and I have to reboot my machine. Is the other files I have to change or is there something I have to do that I am unaware of. Please help!

When you installed XP, was it as the second (hdb) drive?

No it was my first drive then I disconnected it because I was told to use my first drive as Linux. So the XP was install as a first and only drive. Then I got the second drive and made it my master drive and install Linux on the new drive. The I change the XP drive to slave. So if I disable my primary master in the bios the xp will boot up.

I was just going through some questions and do I not have the right boot sector with the chainloader +1 command

Yes, you have the right setting in your Grub configuration file. I think your problem is that you set Windows up one way and then moved it to another location, making every Registry entry, not to mention all of its initialization files that are looking for things on C:\ drive when it is now at least D:\ drive. No operating system will work like this, not even our flexible Linux (although it is easier to do).

What do you have in each of these--which one is the easiest to reinstall?

The simplest way, in my opinion, is to put the XP disk back as the master, reinstall Linux to the slave drive and pick a boot loader to let you pick between the two.

If you have too much invested in Linux, you will need to the device.map and probably /etc/fstab. That done, try this command:

grub-install /dev/hda

Good luck

How about using the map option? Read the info page on GRUB - it has instructions on how to get windows to boot.

I just succeeded in a dual boot system (Suse 8.1 and XP) with two harddrives set up in similar fashion.

Using your drive naming, this is what worked for me:

title Windows XP (Home Edition)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

I think the boot command is probably redundant and unnecessary, but it works for me.

"but cannot get Windows XP to boot"

Nice ! Welcome to the free community !
I really do not see any issu there :D