Hi all,

I've set up many systems with Grub before yet this one for some reason refuses to boot WinXP. This system has two disks. It boots Gentoo and RH9 just fine (off of hda); but choosing WinXP (hdc) just gives me a "chainloader +1" and black screen.

Note: since linuxes are on hda, and WinXP is on hdc (hdc's mbr is written by with NTbootloader), if i tell the BIOS to boot off of ide1 it will boot XP. Telling BIOS to boot off of ide0 results in GRUB loading, where (as mentioned above), Gentoo & RH work but not WinXP.

See any errors below??

contents of grub.conf:
title Gentoo Linux (2.4.20-genkernel-bbj) athlon
root (hd0,1)
kernel /kernel-2.4.20-gentoo-r8 root=/dev/hda1 hde=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-gentoo-r8
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-20.9) athlon
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-20.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hde=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-20.9.img
title Windoze XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

fdisk -l /dev/hda
/dev/hda1 * 1 2422 19454683+ 83 Linux (gentoo partition, reiserfs)
/dev/hda2 2423 2447 200812+ 83 Linux (RH & gentoo /boot)
/dev/hda3 2448 2543 771120 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda4 2544 5005 19776015 f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 2544 2607 514048+ 83 Linux (RH /var)
/dev/hda6 2608 5005 19261903+ 83 Linux (RH /)

fdisk -l /dev/hdc
/dev/hdc1 * 1 3824 30716248+ c Win95 FAT32 (LBA) (WinXP)
/dev/hdc2 3825 9729 47431912+ 83 Linux (/archive)

No other disks. cdrw is /dev/hdd, dvdrom is /dev/hdf (promise raid in non raid mode). Any problems with this setup?

I actually had a similiar problem, it kinda silly but i'll tell you about it anyway. It turned out to be the nano editor(I think) I was using to edit grub.conf, I was absolutely sure that I got everything right but it just wouldn't work, so I ditched the old grub.conf and wrote a new one using vi and it worked.

Also if xp wasn't on hdc when it was installed you may need to remap the drives so that the drive becomes the first.

If everything else fails, you might want to try doing it the other way around - using ntldr to grub instead.

Hi Demonbane, how do i do the map thing? Can you illustrate with an example that would apply to my situation? i.e. hda and hdc. Thanks. PS - i checked, and there are no stray new lines or anything. I always use VI.

To remap see also:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+Win9x+Grub-HOWTO/
http://www.gnu.org/manual/grub-0.92/html_mono/grub.html
http://www.mcc.ac.uk/grub/grub_toc.html
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Multiboot-with-GRUB.html

you add:
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I just read grub documentation again though, i dont think this is gonna work with windows xp, not to mention that this may not be your problem to begin with.
Try roonoverify (hd1) as well, that loads the mbr in your second harddisk, and as I mentioned before consider using ntldr as the main bootloader, personally I've experienced less problems doing it this way.

Hi - thanks for the mapping explanation. Looking at 4.2.6 of the GRUB .92 manual, it suggests that as well. I will try in a couple of hours and let you all know how it goes. Thanks.

Hi everyone - the map command fixed the problem. I wasn't aware that Windows would not want to boot unless it was on drive 0. How silly!
DemonBane and JZL240I-U, thanks for the tips and useful links.

For the record, here's the functional copy:

title Windoze XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Glad to hear you've got it sorted out, its probably not xp itself but the nt os loader that is complaining when it isn't on drive0. But anyway interesting to hear that the map command does work for XP.

Glad you solved it. Is it still the good old boot loader Version 4.01 of NT4.0 btw.? I used that one for SuSE 6.4 but SuSE 8.1 mangled over my MBR with GRUB -- since that worked from the first boot, I didn't change it back either.

Also good that you could make use of the docs. This is a great site for creating new bookmarks so I try to pass them along.