Easy Fedora/WinXP GRUB problem for the eggheads!

krashd · 06-02-2004, 09:03 AM

Right, a few weeks ago when first trying Linux, I set my XP drive to be Slave and freshly installed Fedora Core 2 on a new Master HD, I chose to install GRUB and have it set everything up and everything went and ran peachy, until I tried to boot into XP later on using the loader and got nothing. I got plenty of help via the net and plenty of things to try which only got me as far as "NTLDR not found", I was told to boot the XP drive as normal and got the same error. To cut a long story short, I never regained control of the drive via it's own MBR and ended up using a floppy with the NTLDR, Ndetect and boot.ini files on it until i finally reinstalled and scrapped linux.

This time to stop Fedora meddling, I installed XP on it's own and swapped drives before installing Fedora on it's own (but with GRUB installed). So I have Fedora working and XP working. I want my Fedora drive as it is (Primary Master with the 3 standard linux partitions) and my WinXP drive as the Primary Slave with it's single partition. How do I set this up without unleashing hell?

Rob

jmorse · 06-02-2004, 09:11 AM

...
Allow Fedora to setup grub, then edit the conf file [/boot/grub/menu.lst]

add a section which reads like:
>
>title WindowsXP
>map (hd0) (hd1)
>map (hd1) (hd0)
>rootnoverify (hd0,0)
>chainloader +1

This tells grub to add a new menu item called WindowsXP, swap the hard disks over [bios trick], set the root partition to the first partition on the first harddisk [actually the second], and load the windows/dos chainloader.

Save, and reboot with both drives in the machine. You may need to run 'grub-install /dev/hda1' with both drives in so that it can detect both hard disks.

If that doesn't work change >rootnoverify (hd0,0) to read >rootnoverify (hd1,0).
I'm fairly confident it's the right way round!

Demonbane · 06-02-2004, 09:14 AM

try this:
Set the the bios to boot from your linux drive, then add this to your /boot/grub.conf:

Code:

title winxp
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

krashd · 06-02-2004, 09:28 AM

thanks guys, will try those out now

MadCowIV · 12-09-2004, 10:22 AM

Okay, so I'm having a problem here too. My setup is a little odd, so (of course) my GRUB doesn't like it. My WindowsXP drive is on a SCSI (takes the whole thing, so one partition there. This reads in as /dev/sda1) and my Fedora Core 3 is installed on my main Maxtor 60 gig hd (/dev/hda1, naturally). Booting Linux works nicely, booting windows gives me the lovely "NTLDR not found" message. I would just use the instructions above, but I don't know quite how I should set mine up. Thanks!