Dual Booting and MBR?

pablowablo · 08-27-2004, 07:34 AM

I'm having problems booting into windows through the grub bootloader...

First, here is my setup...

First hard disk:

/ on hd0,0
/boot on hd0,1
/home on hd0,2

Second hard disk:

windows on hd1,0
user partition on hd1,1

First I disconnected my first hard disk (so I can install the bootloader of windows in the MBR of the first drive)... everything went ok and I can boot into windows properly using the windows bootloader...

Then I reconnected my first drive, installed Linux in it and configured grub for dual boot... but when I try to boot to windows through grub I get on my screen the entries for windows in the grub/menu.lst

Code:

title=Windows XP
..... on /hd1,0
makeactive
chainloader +1

and underneath all that is a bunch of garbage values (just one line of garbage, maybe about 8 characters long)

something like that, I apologize, I'll edit as soon as I get back to Linux.

So what did I do wrong?

It's possible that I have windows use the MBR of the second drive and Linux on the first right? And I just set my bios boot options to the Linux drive and point the MBR of the windows drive in the grub configuration... Am I wrong on this?

masand · 08-27-2004, 09:14 AM

hi
u can do all this... with grub
post ur grub.conf here and exact eror msgs u get

regards

pablowablo · 08-27-2004, 09:29 AM

Hello thanks for the reply

here is my /boot/grub/menu.lst

Code:

## default num
# Set the default entry to the entry number NUM. Numbering starts from 0, and
# the entry number 0 is the default if the command is not used.
#
# You can specify 'saved' instead of a number. In this case, the default entry
# is the entry saved with the command 'savedefault'.           
default		0

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout		5

# Pretty colours
color cyan/blue white/blue

# Display a splashscreen
splashimage (hd0,1)/boot/splash.xpm.gz
foreground  bbbbbb
background  000000



## ## End Default Options ##

title		Libranet GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.21
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.4.21 root=/dev/hda1 ro hdc=scsi
savedefault
boot

title		Libranet GNU/Linux, kernel 2.4.21 (single user mode)
root		(hd0,1)
kernel		/vmlinuz-2.4.21 root=/dev/hda1 ro hdc=scsi single
savedefault
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

title		Windows on /dev/hdb1
rootnoverify	(hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


title  Memory Test
root   (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86.bin

I don't really get any errors, just the screen with these lines and some garbage values

Code:

title		Windows on /dev/hdb1
rootnoverify	(hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

(SOME GARBAGE HERE) **&*&*(@#&@#

well i think I know what the problem was... I installed Windows when it was the only drive in the pc so the boot.ini used the first disk of the pc, however when I connected the other disk and installed Linux on it... Windows became the 2nd drive... So I edited the boot.ini file and change rdisk(0) to rdisk(1).... and guess what? now I ruined windows! I should really sstop trying to take things in my own hands from now on... Sad thing is my XP disk is not with me right... My brother's going to kill me now... lol

masand · 08-27-2004, 09:34 AM

hi
so now that u know what the problwm is
why don't u edit the boot.ini file by urself

regards

pablowablo · 08-27-2004, 09:51 AM

Hello,

I tried ti edit the boot.ini file in Linux but I realized that my kernel doesn't support NTFS write, so I could not make the changes.

I also don't have any boot floppy here or my Win Xp disk to perform recovery... Guess I'll just have to wait for my Win XP disk..

I think I am beyond help by now

Thanks anyway

masand · 08-27-2004, 09:55 AM

hi
there
what about compilng ur kernel for NTFS write support

also have a look here
i saw this link today in this forum only(may be u can get some tools instead)

http://ultimatebootcd.com/

regards

pablowablo · 08-28-2004, 09:56 PM

Hello, thanks again for the response..

I just fixed my boot.ini in Windows using a boot floppy..

Yes, I do plan on upgrading to kernel 2.6 for NTFS write support (I use 2.4 currently) but I would like to setup my booting properly first. I'll explain why, what I want to do is to boot Windows from grub. I have done this before but from a different setup (only one MBR).. Now when I try to boot from grub (the disk having linux being primary and windows secondary) I only get the lines in /boot/grub/menu.lst and a bunch of garbage (tho sometimes no garbage shows up)... I do not know why this exactly happens ,my hunch is that my boot.ini considers the windows the master drive so when I boot from grub (windows is a slave in this case) it fails... So I try editing the boot.ini file but I still get the same results..

Here is my original boot.ini which boots properly when I set the windows drive as the master:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Now I don't exactly know what I'm doing here but I edited it as follows:

Code:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

After that I still get the same results when I boot from grub....

Anyone can give me some help?

Demonbane · 08-28-2004, 10:02 PM

First revert the changes you've done in boot.ini, otherwise it won't work (besides, disk(0) in boot.ini is used for scsi drives IIRC)

then try modify the winxp entry in menu.lst so that it looks like this:

Code:

title		Windows on /dev/hdb1
rootnoverify	(hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

masand · 08-29-2004, 12:18 AM

here is my boot.ini
i amhaving windows in /dev/hda5
and the boot partiton for windows is /dev/hda1
------------------------
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server" /fastdetect

-------------------------------------

hope this helps

regards