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Problems dual booting RH 9 & XP Pro

I saw a lot of other people having trouble dual booting RH9 & XP, but unfortunately, none of them are getting the same error that I am... If I tell BIOS to boot from the MBR, Windows XP loads with no option to boot linux. If I boot to the Linux partition, LILO loads up with DOS and Linux as an option. Linux loads fine, but when I try to load DOS (XP) it says that NTLDR is missing. I heard that running the xp recovery console and typing fixmbr and fixboot would fix it, but I've also heard that this can screw stuff up if both Linux and XP are installed on the same drive (my setup). Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Do you have a boot partition?, have you tried GRUB instead of LILO?

I don't have a seperate partition just for the boot sector (unless Linux would have created that when I installed it) and I haven't tried GRUB yet. How would I install GRUB now?

Quote:

I heard that running the xp recovery console and typing fixmbr and fixboot would fix it, but I've also heard that this can screw stuff up if both Linux and XP are installed on the same drive

These commands would erase the MBR and put the Windows bootloader there. Since you said that when you boot from the MBR, you go straight to Windows, it appears to be already there.
Apparently you installed lilo to a partition instead of the MBR. To change this, boot into Linux, and use a text editor to edit the /etc/lilo.conf file. You have to be root to do this. Near the top of this file you will see a line somewhat like this: 'boot=/dev/hda1'. This determines where lilo will be installed (of course it's not /dev/hda1, since that's where XP probably is. Don't install lilo to XP's partition). If you want to install to the MBR, you put '/dev/hda' here. Towards the bottom, you will see entries for each os. You might see a paragraph like this:

Code:

other=/dev/hda1

        label=dos

        table=/dev/hda

You can change the 'label=dos' to 'label=WinXP' if you like.
Run the 'lilo' program to apply the changes.

Or you can use the XP bootloader to load Linux. Use this command in Linux: 'dd if=/dev/hdax of=/lilo.bin bs=512 count=1'. This will create a file called /lilo.bin .Replace the 'x' in /dev/hdax with the number of the partition lilo was installed to. Copy /lilo.bin to your Windows 'C:\', and add this line in Windows to your C:\boot.ini file : 'C:\lilo.bin= "Red Hat Linux'
This will add an entry in the Windows bootloader.

What I would recommend if you have just installed both of the operatings systems is to install them again, I know it's a very unmeasures solution, but it would be better. If you want to install again both systems, I would recommend to partition the disc again with proper boot, windows and linux partitions.
Regarding to grub, I use suse and to install it I run install-grub /dev/hda (hda because that's where I have installed the boot).
But I strongly recommend not to install grub unless you have a /boot partition
Hope hits helps somehow

Hmm... I just tried the "dd..." command for every single partition, added them all to the boot.ini file and none of them worked. LILO right now is configured as you have listed above, but when I try to boot DOS I get the NTLDR missing error. Right now I can switch between the two OS's by going into BIOS, so I'd rather not have to reinstall both OS's... I could however repartition my drive to allow for a boot sector. How big should this sector be? What file system should it be? Thanks for all of your help.

Make a /boot partition that is Fat32 and about 100MB. This partition (/boot) is where you want the computer looking for your Lilo.conf or Grub menu.lst file to load the boot loader to get the info to boot your OS"s.

rberry88