rh9 multiple booting
 

hi;
I have a large hd and have 3 partitions on it linux, xp, and another partition that was boot and was xp as well, but without internet connection (im sick of viruses) since I have installed linux (after xp) grub can boot in both linux & the first xp partition , but it wont read or boot the second xp partition ,
can someone please help me so i can edit grub so it can boot in all existing partitions?
thank you
mariano

I was under the impression that Windows had to be on the first partition

And probably is , remember that grub is working with one xp partition and the linux one but is the other xp partition that i have that is not working
regards
mariano

What I meant was that if I'm right (and I'm running on vague memories here) it won't work if it isn't the first partition. Period. But are you saying it used to work OK?

can you post your menu.lst for grub

Grub will boot any partition. XP needs to be in a primary partition on the first (BIOS boot) disk - not necessarily the first partition. The last (M$ost) O/S to need that was probably the original Win 95.
Post the output from "fdisk -l" as well as the grub conf (which may be called grub.conf for RH9).

Do you have two separate versions of xp installed or is one of the xp partitions just data? Grub doesn't actually boot xp, it chainloads it which means it points to the bootloader in xp and tells the machine to look there for a bootloader. You need the entries for booting the second xp in the first xp. I'm curious as to how you were booting before installing Linux and what distribution of Linux do you have?

This is the way I understand everything I've read about booting windows, so if it's not right, someone correct me.

this is the output of fdisk -l
sorry about the delay
regards
mariano


[root@localhost root]# cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this
file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb5
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb
default=2
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-6smp)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-6smp ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-6smp.img
title Red Hat Linux-up (2.4.20-6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-6 ro root=LABEL=/ hdc=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-6.img
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1
[root@localhost root]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 47229 60801 109025122+ f Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb3 7297 39395 257835217+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb4 * 39397 47228 62910540 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb5 47229 60547 106984836 83 Linux
/dev/hdb6 60548 60801 2040223+ 82 Linux swap

Partition table entries are not in disk order
[root@localhost root]#