Hi All,
I would appreciate if anyone out there can give me a hand. I have checked tons of threads with a similar topic to the one I'm submitting but I believe my problem is slightly different.
I thought I knew a lot about this stuff but I'm stuck!!! I've spent a weekend trying to fix it, but maybe I need a hand from the community ...
What I'm trying to do
I want to use GRUB to dual boot fedora core 5 and Windows XP. I am doing this on two separate hard drives. I have used this set up for about three years (first with RedHat9/WinXP and later with (FC2/WinXP) and never had any problems until now.
Summary of my setup
I have WinXP on a primary 120GB drive and FC5 on a 80GB secondary drive. GRUB is installed on the second drive. I configure my BIOS to boot of the second drive, load grub and then use the "map" commands in grub to virtually map the WinXP drive to look like the first (you know, map (hd0, hd1) e.t.c) so that It boots up. This has always worked.
My current problem ...
Fedora Core 5 Boots up fine. The problem is trying to boot WinXP. It starts booting OK, I get the Black Windows XP splash screen with the progress bar showing that it is loading. Then all of the sudden I end up with a blue screen of death. The error is along the lines of "STOP: 0x0000007E")
I then have no choice but to reboot. Booting up XP in Safe mode does work though ...
What I have tried thus far:
Believe me guys I've done my research on this one:
I still have my old RedHat 9 installation on a separate hard drive, and when I use that drive and the Windows XP drive together (same setup as above) everything just works! That's why I think it is something wrong with FC5 or grub ...
I've tried:
- Upgrading my windows display adapter drivers
- Moving *.sys files from the windows installation to try to find if any of the drivers is causing the crash
- Using the Windows Verifier to check the drivers .. All the extra info I got was that some driver was triyng to use memory outside of that allocated for it (didn't say which)
Where I need your help:
* I Some people think it is a problem with Windows Drivers .. If this was the case, I would expect the Red Hat 9 installation to have the same problem, but it doesn't! Can anyone explain this?
* I can boot up XP in Safe mode, so I'm assuming GRUB is doing its job properly (or am I making the wrong assumption?)
* My Red Hat 9 installation uses GRUB 0.93, however FC5 uses GRUB 0.97. Does anyone think this is an issue? Should I consider using an older version of GRUB on FC5 (I don't know if that's possible?)
* This is the GRUB configuration I use for my XP installation. Is there anything else I could try?
title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
* Finally, I have read that FC5 has some issue with nvidia drivers (or used to). Now I understand that it is mostly related to X and linux gui (which all works fine for me), but is there any chance that GRUB looks at those drivers or something before WinXP starts loading (I know I'm grasping for straws now but that's all I've got at this stage
* Any other advise? Please help, I really want to move from RedHat9 to FC5 but this is the last obstacle in the way (Unfortunately I'lve got family that needs to use the XP installation). I've already got a kickass FC5 setup but I've had to connect and disconnect the cable all this time to get back into windows ....
Thanks in advance