mjolnir 0 Posted December 20, 2005 Ok, here's the problem... Running FC4, latest distro, on my primary master, primary slave is my storage drive, secondary master is my dvd rom, and secondary slave is windows xp. Problem being, grub does not want to play nice with the windows boot... keeping in mind that: hda = fc4 hdb = storage hdc = dvd rom hdd = winxp how should my grub.conf file look? currently it looks like: default=0 timeout=8 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz hiddenmenu title Fedora Core (2.6.14-1.1653_FC4) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.14-1.1653_FC4.img title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd3,0) Yet, if I select windows at the grub select screen, it dumps me right back to the grub menu. Share this post Link to post
danleff 0 Posted December 20, 2005 Was the secondary slave where XP is installed originally always the secondary slave, or did you move the drive jumper designation? Do you know how to edit the grub file at the login screen? If so, try; title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd3,0) chainloader +1 or; chainloader (hd3,0) +1 Share this post Link to post
mjolnir 0 Posted December 20, 2005 well, the chainloader idea was a good idea, and, although it didn't work, it did do something different. This time it said "error 21, no existing disc" Which I know isn't true, because if I go into bios and tell it to ignore all the other drives, it will load windows up just fine. as far as "was windows set installed as secondary slave originally", no, it was primary master when I installed it, as, for some reason, windows didn't want to play nice with installing it with my nix drives installed at the same time. So I had just it and the dvd rom installed, changing it to the sec. slave afterwards. Share this post Link to post
danleff 0 Posted December 20, 2005 Originally posted by mjolnir: Quote: well, the chainloader idea was a good idea, and, although it didn't work, it did do something different. This time it said "error 21, no existing disc" Which I know isn't true, because if I go into bios and tell it to ignore all the other drives, it will load windows up just fine. as far as "was windows set installed as secondary slave originally", no, it was primary master when I installed it, as, for some reason, windows didn't want to play nice with installing it with my nix drives installed at the same time. So I had just it and the dvd rom installed, changing it to the sec. slave afterwards. ...and there is the problem. When you install Windows, it attempts to always install on the primary master drive. Therefore, the Windows boot.ini file references the Windows startup files on the primary master, where they were when you installed Windows originally. When grub calls the boot.ini file, boot.ini is looking for the startup files for Windows on the primary master. There is a lot of hot debate about this, but you should always install windows on the primary master, then Linux on the other drives, if using multiple drives on a system. You can't switch drive designations without making adjustments. When you tell the bios to ignore the other drives, it forces the Windows drive as primary master, or the only drive in the system. Solution? make the Windows drive primary master and then install linux on the other. Grub will then reference Windows and Linux correctly. If you know how to rescue the Linux system, then you can adjust the grub menu.lst or grub.conf file to designate where youir Linux root filesystem is, without doing a Linux re-install. Or currently as the system is, if you know how to edit grub and/or the boot.ini correctly, you can make some changes to get both to work. Make sure that the jumpers and cables are correct when you make any changes. Share this post Link to post
mjolnir 0 Posted December 22, 2005 Sigh, I was fearing it may have been something like that... ;( One of these days I'll get off my lazy rear and find a win emulator that will allow me to play my mmorpg's, so I can just have done with windows once and for all... Anyway, thank you very much for your help, it is appreciated. Share this post Link to post
james419 0 Posted January 5, 2006 I boot all the time from other than drive a. It is not grub not being nice but instead is Windows. Windows ALWAYS wants to be first in line and insists on booting as the primary drive. It is necessary to add two map lines to grub to get Windows to boot. For instance on my computer the grub boot line in FC4 is as follows: title Windows XP map (hd1) (hd0) map (hd0) (hd1) rootnoverify (hd1,1) chainloader +1 Of course you will have to use the proper hdx for my drive hd1. My computer has Windows located on partition 2 of my main ide drive (hda) Fedora Core 4 is on an external USB drive- sda. My BIOS is set to boot from floppy, cdrom, usd hd, ide hd. This method works every time. Jim Share this post Link to post
zaziork 0 Posted January 6, 2006 Originally posted by james419: Quote: I boot all the time from other than drive a. It is not grub not being nice but instead is Windows. Windows ALWAYS wants to be first in line and insists on booting as the primary drive. It is necessary to add two map lines to grub to get Windows to boot. For instance on my computer the grub boot line in FC4 is as follows: title Windows XP map (hd1) (hd0) map (hd0) (hd1) rootnoverify (hd1,1) chainloader +1 Thanks so much for your post I had been searching the forums for ages looking for a resolution to my dual booting problem, and this simple step has solved it. All the best, Dan Share this post Link to post
