I am running a machine that duel boots with Windows XP pro and Red Hat Linux 9 on two seperate harddrives, The first time I installed Red Hat 9 I had GRUB, which was okay, but alittle annoying because I would reboot my machine and go away, forgetting that I had GRUB and that Linux was my default and so when I came back it would go into linux, and this got on my nerves....

To make a long story short Yesterday after spending hours trying to work out some Xsever problems I decided to reinstall Red Hat 9, this time I chose not to install GRUB, so it boots into Linux fine with a boot disk, but instead of wanting to go into Windows it comes up with GRUB, I had this same problem before with LILO, and I had to reinstall linux, of course that was before I knew about LinuxQuestions.org and there has got to me a better way of getting past GRUB... Like I said it did the same with LILO and it came up with LI, I ended up formattin both drives and starting out fresh.. That took hours and hours, and I need windows for school, and I don't have all the time in the world to mess with it..

If someone could please help if they know of anything I can do within Linux, maybe I could put GRUB on here again?

Thanks In Advance..

you can set up both lilo and grub so that they will boot windows by default. look at
info grub
and
man lilo
man lilo.conf

That is a good idea, but for not I just need to know how to get back into windows...

Like I said it comes up at start-up

Boot From CD
Boot From CD
Boot From Floppy

Or however that is while checking for any CDs or Floppy disks, what is used to say after that was

Loading GRUB.. Or something like that!

Now unless I have my Linux Boot Disk in it just says GRUB and you can not get to the screen to Selected Windows XP, and all I can do right now is get into Linux using that boot disk..

I want to know a simple way to get back into Windows XP without reinstalling any OS.. I know Windows is still there its on a different HD...

you'd have to reinstall grub or lilo with the right configuration. RH installation might have set up the configuration files already in which case it should be very easy. If not, I'm not sure how to do it for your particular setup but there should be many threads here discussing how to do it.

Alternatively, you could see if you can just take out the linux hd, do whatever is needed so your bios will boot from the xp hd, fix the mbr of your xp drive (use the recocery console of xp that you can enter using the installation cd).

I know it asks about GRUB when installing linux, is their another way to install it? I mean like is their an RPM online, or should it be on one of the RH Cds.. as you can tell I know little about installing things on linux.. I rarley use linux, and everytime I come here to play with it I screw something up..

grub and lilo are alrady installed in the sense that everything you need to get the bootloader into your mbr is already there. There probably is a gui tool in redhat for setting up the bootloader. Sorry don't know much about redhat but you should be able to find it.

If there isn't, you'd have to do it from the command line.

Is there a way to UNinstall GRUB? Originally I chose to install it on hdb and switch drive letters, but that didn't work. I got tired of booting RH9 with a floppy and grub-installed in hda. Now all is GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB and beeps. I figure I will be able to figure out the proper grub.conf someday, but for now I just want it out! Any hints?

If you have an XP installation disk, start the recovery console with it and then fix MBR. I don't know the exact command but I'm sure can find it somewhere here.
If you have a windows boot floppy, you could start that and then run
fdisk /mbr
This will get rid of grub/lilo as well. You won't be able to boot linux after doing this unless you have a boot floppy.

For Freakygeek55, all you need to do is get into your RH system first, you can do this using RH9 installation disk, and choose "linux rescue" at boot prompt. You can then "chroot /mnt/sysimage"...

Then look for grub.conf at /boot/grub, make sure it's there, otherwise try to look at /usr/share/doc/grub* and get the sample config...
now to bring back grub, type: grub at shell, you'll enter grub prompt, type following:

grub > root (hd0,0) # this is where your linux root partition
grub > setup (hd0) # this is where you'll install grub

I assume you know GRUB naming convention of partitions. (hd0) means install GRUB at MBR instead of partitions' boot record...

To make windows as default boot, you need to change "default" option, or you can arrange the order of the menu at grub.conf.

you can find sample grub.conf here http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=77099

For renatus777:
There is no way to uninstall boot loaders, even MS loaders... to uninstall usually you override them with other boot loader, the common method is replace them with MS' boot loader using "fdisk /mbr" at dos prompt, but this is only work for replacing first drive only....

It is possible to go to a basic command line when you boot into grub, I think you just hit the 'c' button on your keyboard.
When you are in the command line you can boot any operating system that is installed.
For windows enter:

<PROMPT> rootnoverify(hd0,0)
<PROMPT> chainloader +1
<PROMPT> boot

this is assuming you have loaded windows onto HDD 1,partition 1. if you have loaded it on the other drive then you would use hd1.
grub starts addressing hard drives and partitions from 0.
To boot redhat 9 you would enter

<PROMPT> root(hd0,0) ###or wherever you have it
<PROMPT> kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=LABEL=/1 hdb=ide-scsi
<PROMPT> initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
<PROMPT> boot

and that is it!
if you know what kernel you have, you can find out where your linux installation is by entering
<PROMPT> find vmlinuz-[your kernel number here]

if root=LABEL=/1 dosn't work for your system you can try
root=/dev/hd[your drive number here]
this just tells grub where to find the operating system.

hope this helps you.

Now my windows is my default OS, and GRUB is working right, and so I can not get into XP and RH 9.. Thanks a whole bunch....