Trying to boot to WinXP using Grub with Compaq PC

[scantu 0]

Hello everyone,

 

I have successfully installed FC3 and grub on a new slave drive that I installed. My compaq presario PC came with WinXP which is on the Master Drive. After changing the boot order in my Bios so as boot up from the slave drive, grub comes up with no problmes and I can choose to go to FC3 Linux with no problem. However, when I choose to go to WinXP (which it does by default), I get the following error(?) and then my PC just freezes as it tries to boot Windows:

 

rootnoverify (hd1, 1)

chainloader +1

 

When I go back and go to my bios to change the boot order, I have no problem getting back into Windows XP with no problem.

 

In trying to solve this problem, I tried the following mod in grub.config file:

 

rootnoverify (hd1, 0)

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

chainloader +1

 

After I made this mod, the next time I tried booting to WinXP, Compaq went to 'system recovery'. Which I stopped. I am at a lost currently - any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

scantu

 

[danleff 0]

Looks like you installed Grub to the slave drive? Did you do the install with the bios booting to the slave drive?

 

Windows likes to be on the master primary drive. The issue is that some Compaq computers are supposed to have a hidden partition at the beginning of the master drive.

 

Also, is your syntax off?

 

rootnoverify (hd1, 0) should be

 

rootnoverify (hd1,0) no space between (hd1,0)

 

If not try changing the rootnoverify for the XP boot line to read;

 

rootnoverify (hd1,1)

[scantu 0]

Yes, Grub is installed on the slave drive. My compaq does indeed have two partitons on the master drive (C, and D). D is the 'system recovery' partition that compaq uses.

 

My syntax is OK, I have no spaces between (hd1,0). The grub.config file was originally set up as 'rootonoverify (hd1,1)' - this is when my PC just hangs with:

rootnoverify (hd1, 1)

chainloader +1

 

when trying to boot to Windows. You are right the issue here is most certainily with compaq's hidden D partition (system recovery). If I could somehow disable it, I might get it to work OK. Even though I have both Windows and FC3 working just fine, I would really much like to use grub as an interface to choose which drive to boot from instead of having to get into my bios everytime I want to change the hard drive priority.

 

Any other suggestions would be welcomed.

[danleff 0]

Hmm...I thought that the recovery partition should be hidden, so you should not be able to see it and you should not see it as a drive partition.

 

May I ask, did you make any partition changes to the master primary drive?

 

Also, let's try this.

 

Can you post the contents of the grub file?

 

Also, when you boot into Fedora, get to a termnal window as root user and type

 

fdisk -l (hit the enter key)

 

-l = is the small letter l, not the number one. Post the resulting output by selecting it with your mouse, hit ctrl-c on the keyboard, then paste it to the post using ctrl-v

 

We should look and see how Fedora sees the partitions from these outputs.

[scantu 0]

Well, I decided to reinstall FC3 on my slave drive along with grub. After having new problems (it was probably something dumb that I did), I went ahead and installed grub on the master (hda) drive and the rest of FC3 on the slave (hdb) drive. Once again, FC3 worked just fine when booting it from grub and again when trying to boot Windows XP from grub, my compaq PC went to recovery mode which I quit.

 

To make a long story short, I went into my grub.conf file and explicitely changed from where windows was trying to boot from (change it from hda partiton 1 (system recovery) to partition 2 (windows). Below is the change.

 

Changed:

rootnoverify (hd0,0) # hd0 being master and 0 partition 1

chainloader +1

 

To:

rootnoverify (hd0,1) # hd0 being master and 1 partiton 2

chainloader +1

 

The first time I tried to boot to windows from grub, I got some windows warning - it still allowed to start window normally with no problem. After that, everytime I go to windows, I get no more nasty messages - it just goes straight through with no problem along with FC3.

 

Anyhow, thanks for your help -

 

[danleff 0]

Great! So, your Windows boot information is on the second partiton of the primary drive. For some reason, the hidden partition is not hidden, as far as Grub and Linux is concerned.

 

That's why I wanted to see what Fedora was seeing things as.

 

Nice work!