dual boot with xp and FC6 on 2 sata drives
 

I know this another dual boot question, but I have tried all other solutions and none have worked.

Right now I have 2 sata hard drives.

sda has windows XP Pro
sdb has FC6 and the /boot

my /boot/grube/menu.lst looks like this:

The stuff to boot Fedora Core 6.

Title Windows XP Pro
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map(hd0)(hd1)
map(hd1)(hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot


Also the I am booting to the second hard drive that has linux. In grube that hard drive is considered to be the hd0. I think that it is because I installed grub on sdb.

I would like to do this without having to touch the windows drive, if possible.

if u wanna install grub on sda then do this # grub-install /dev/sda ... this wud install and take care of ur boot loader...

didn't work
 

I installed grub on sda and now when I boot to sdb I get

grubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrub grubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrub

and when I boot to sda I get:

starting grub
error 13

What do I do now. I would like to not reinstall windows again please.

u can get back ur windows as well.... but i am not sure whether u have installed ur linux properly.. to get back ur windows again jus boot with ur windows boot disk.. then in ur command prompt jus type "fdisk /mbr" .. this wud bring up ur default windows MBR...

Ok
 

I will reinstall the MBR for windows, but not sure what you mean by I installed linux wrong.

if put windows on sda and boot to that drive, and install linux on sdb, where should I put the /boot and how should I set up the grub menu.lst file.

may be u must have messed up with ur boot loader configuration during installation..wen i installed it went fine.. n i am still working on it..

what to do now
 

I have replaced the MBR of windows and am going to reinstall FC6.

Windows will be the primary disk at sda
Linux will be the secondary disk at sdb

how should I set up the grub boot loader during the linux install?

When you get to the grub install part on the linux install, do what you want, but do it all the way. Install grub to the /boot partition of /dev/sdb, but allow it to overwrite the MBR of sda. All the rest of your configs looked good, but you need to have the grub install split between 2 drives. When you tried to install it to sda, it looked for a boot partition on sda, and it isn't there, its on sdb.

As you have already found, recreating the windows MBR is as simple as booting with the win cd and going into repair, and using the fdisk /mbr. So let grub overwrite the mbr, and everything will be good. The rest of the config you posted initially looked fine.

Peace,
JimBass

The only problem I've ever had with Fedora Core, was installing Grub. For some reason, it never co-operated if I installed it using the "default" setting. I'd get Grub Error 17. What I ended up doing, when it came time to install Grub, I'd choose "advanced", and choose to install Grub on the MBR of hda.

When I did this, it worked fine, otherwise, I'd get Error 17...

IGF

same problem
 

I use to get the same problem. grub error 13.

I am reinstalling linux right now, when I'm done do I still modify the menu.lst file?

See what grub says. It may do everything correct, or it may not. I'd try it and see if it works. Bear in mind whay IGF said about using advanced to install grub. If the way it installs doesn't boot windows, then write in that map part into menu.lst.

Peace,
JimBass

still not working
 

I used the advance option to install grub and windows boots only I don't even see grub, but when I try to boot sdb where linux is all I get is

grubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrub grubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrubgrub grubgrubgrub

Is there a solution to this?

If you don't see grub on a normal boot, you missed something. What do you mean "when I try to boot sdb"? You don't boot sdb, you boot sda, and grub redirects it to the configs on sdb. If you try to boot directly to sdb by switching the drive order in Bios that will fail, because grub's MBR is on sda, not sdb. Sdb has no MBR.

Peace,
JimBass

Ok, I understand that I can't boot the sdb. But when I boot the sda all I get is windows loading. There is no grub at all. When I installed linux I chose advanced grub installation and choose to install grub on the MBR of sda. Did I do this wrong?

Yes. There is no way that you installed grub to sda's MBR, but rebooting the machine goes directly to windows. Either you did not install it to the MBR of sda, or you told it to, but somehow it didn't. Yet another reason to detest FC. This isn't difficult, yet it is screwing up in some way.

This is an outside chance, as a grub install would default to booting FC instead of windows, but just to check, the minute you get past your Bios screen, do you get a list of operating systems?

Peace,
JimBass