I have several laptops that run Win/XP and, because of lack of support for XP, I want to add a Ubuntu installation to each. I first created a LiveCD! of lubuntu v13.10 and ran it on a Sony laptop (win7) just to see if I liked Ubuntu - I do (and still do).
My first conversion is an IBM T42 machine, so I tried to install v13.10 - it died with the pae error. So I created an ISO CD with v14.04 and used the forcepae option. It took three (3) tries to get it loaded, but it finally worked. It nicely created a dual boot system with Linux and xp and both worked. Because of the two crashes, there were two rather large partitions of incomplete installations on the HD. I foolishly decided to delete these two partitions and I did. That changes the numbering of the partitions and it would boot only into grub rescue. I was able to find a set of grub rescue commands to get it to boot (either Linux or xp). However, those four (4), somewhat long, commands had to be entered at each boot. So I tried boot-repair. The boot-repair iso disk (2013-05-07 version) DOES NOT support forcepae. So, within Linux, I installed boot-repair and ran it. The laptop will not boot because of the pae issue. Prior to running boot-repair, the info dump is at (paste.ubuntu.com) 7858790, after is at 7859502. Looking though the grub.cfg and grub.lst after running boot-repair, it appears the xp selection is NOT there. Also, I see forcepae in several places. But it will not boot.

Can anyone help?

All that is said here regarding the probable source of your forcepae option is that, "it is possible . . ." (that's not enough for me, however).

OP needs a non-PAE kernel 32-bit distro, such as those within the links below:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/anti.../Final/MX-14/n

http://www.bodhilinux.com/downloads_desktop.php

Radeon graphics may necessitate addendum to kernel line in GRUB of "nomodeset."

EDIT: add Salix Openbox to that list

crunchbang also has a non-pae version:
http://crunchbang.org/download => 32bit => older computers (non-pae)
or directly via bittorrent:
http://crunchbang.org/torrents/crunc...86.iso.torrent

OP doesn't need anything of the sort - and seems to know what s/he wants.
If forcePAE works, that implies the hardware is PAE capable but doesn't report that fact correctly.

I'm surprised boot-repair installs classic grub rather than grub2 - but I wouldn't avise anyone to use boot-repair. You should be able to get it to boot by highlighting the -generic entry and hitting "e" as the messages indicate to edit. Then go down to the kernel line and add " forcepae" (no quotes). Personally I'd aso remove the "quiet splash" so you can see what's happening.
Once up and running, edit /etc/default/grub and add forcepae to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX, save that and run "sudo update-grub". That should get the XP entry added.
At some pont you need to get grub2 installed, but with luck that will come in by default on the next update.

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@syg00
"OP doesn't need anything of the sort," yet, "you need to get grub2 installed."

I guess nobody knows as much as syg00! I learned something today, thanks!

Thanks so much for the help! I think I'm getting closer to a solution.

I was able to boot-up by hitting "e" as you suggested (I actually found that by experimenting). I agree, I'd like to get Grub 2 (as I did initially). However, the /etc/default/grub file already has what you suggested adding:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="forcepae"

I tried moving the forcepae to the default line, but that didn't help. I tried adding a " -- " before forcepae and that didn't seem to help either (the double dash is required in the "e" method). I tried putting forcepae in both places. By "didn't help", I mean forcepae did not show in the menu.lst file.

Also, XP doesn't show up in the menu.lst file either. I need to have the option of booting either OS.

If not boot-repair, then what is the alternative? I have no bias, I'm looking for whatever works.

Maybe boot-repair only updated the MBR, and all the bits for grub2 are still in place. What does this showNote that there may be a mix of grub/grub2, and I don't know enough of apt/dpkg to be able to tell definitively. Even on a "pure" grub2 system grub-legacy shows up because of the way they handled the change from grub to grub2 using grub-pc.
I would be inclined to get things working (or break it totally) and remove/re-install grub completely - see this for a pretty good overview.

As for boot-repair, there probably isn't a better automated offering. I like the data it gives if you don't proceed - but I would use that info for manual corrections, not allow it to do the updates.

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results in: "grub-install (GNU GRUB 0.97)"

So it would seem, the legacy grub is installed...

BTW - EigenFunctions is a he not a she...

At least some of legacy grub is installed.
Did you run the grub-update I suggested above ?. It would need to be run after each change to the default file.
You could just update the menu.lst to add the forcepae to each kernel line, to save having to interrupt the boot each time - doesn't fix the XP missing though.

I'd purge grub and re-install it from scratch - see the doco I linked above; go down to "Purging & Reinstalling GRUB 2". Ignore all the references to chroot, and enter the commands in "via terminal commands" using sudo.
Once that's done, check the default file - it should be back to "factory default" - add the forcepae option again, then run the "sudo update-grub" and re-boot.

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I tried the Purging & Reinstalling GRUB 2 as suggested but it did not help. The last few lines of the process were:

So it looks like it knows about the XP and linux partitions and, at one point, it did have a message about the --forcepae requirement (it asked and I said yes, keep the option). The procedure said, if all is right, run all is NOT well, so I didn't run it!

Then I rebooted, after the manual edits as usual, I was able to run Linux. Also, when I run I get I looked at the grub.cfg and, except for order, everything looks correct. Do I run
--or--
or both?

Can you help?

Yipee! It now works! It boots up with a menu of boot options. I was able to boot-up in both Linux and XP!

What I forgot to do was the Post-Restore Commands:
I now have a system to work with!

It does seem to be slow to boot, should I run:
My next task is to get my networked printer working!

As was requested, I ran
I booted-down and booted-up again and it all seemed to work.

I still have many other issue to fix.