Dual Boot, Grub, FC3-WinXpSP2, 2 drives. No go.

[Robert Locke]

On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 14:06 -0500, Nat Gross wrote:
> Robert Locke wrote:
> 
> >On Mon, 2005-02-28 at 13:18 -0500, Nat Gross wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>Hi;
> >>I installed FC3 on a WinXP-sp2 system, whose c: drive was NOT being used 
> >>(for real), or so I thought. And gave the entire drive, hda, to FC3. I 
> >>reasoned that since my winXP booted into drive E:, the second drive, 
> >>hdb, Grub would have no issues with booting Windows. However, although 
> >>it boots FC3 nicely, when I elect to boot xp, it displays 'rootnoverify 
> >>(hd1,0) chainloader +1' and stops. Due to the partioning of hdb (as 
> >>listed below), I have tried hd1,1 as well, with the same results.
> >>The hardware is as follows:
> >>Dell Intel 1.6ghz, 768 meg ram, 2 hard drives, 20gig and 60gig.
> >>Disk info:
> >>hda:
> >>hda1 1-33,     /boot, 259meg, ext3.
> >>hda2 34-164 swap, 1 gig
> >>hda3 165-2498, /, 18gig, ext3.
> >>
> >>hdb:
> >>hdb1 1-3633, 28.4gig, fa32. (not mounted, or touched with Linux.)
> >>hdb2 3634-7299,28.7gig, Extended. ( ditto)
> >>hdb5 3634-7299,28.7gig,ntfs. (don't know why its listed twice. whatever.)
> >>
> >>The /boot/grub/grub.conf:
> >># 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/hda3
> >>#          initrd /initrd-version.img
> >>#boot=/dev/hda
> >>default=0
> >>timeout=5
> >>splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> >>hiddenmenu
> >>password --md5 blah
> >>title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
> >>    root (hd0,0)
> >>    kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
> >>    initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
> >>title WinXP
> >>    rootnoverify (hd1,1) 
> >>    chainloader +1
> >>=========================
> >>As noted above, I also tried     rootnoverify (hd1,0) .
> >>
> >>Thank you
> >>-nat
> >>
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >You might want to try hdb1,4 on the rootnoverify line.
> >  
> >
> I get: Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by bios.
> 
> >My rationale is the idea that your machine was booting from drive "e".
> >Also note that the fdisk output of hdb5 being the ntfs based partition
> >while hdb1 is the FAT32.
> >  
> >
> The reason for this is that once upon a time, Win did in fact use drive 
> C: as its home drive, and the second drive was 'extra'. Then one day, 
> that install of win crashed and burned and cost me two weeks, (and I 
> switched to Linux on my other machine), so when I re-installed Win, I 
> used my second drive as the main guy, and just left drive C:, waiting 
> for Linux.... And here I am.
> 
> >By the way, the hd nomenclature is "drive number","partition number" and
> >both start counting from zero.  So your first partition would be hd1,0
> >the FAT partition and hd1,4 would be the ntfs partition.  hd1,1 does not
> >actually hold any data, it is an artifact of decisions that MBR
> >partition tables can only define four partitions.  So turn one in to an
> >extended partition that can then be divvied up into additional logical
> >partitions.
> >
> >  
> >
> It's interesting that Grub automatically detected the second drive 
> (although the first one had been formatted).
> I'm wondering if I need to make the ntfs partition 'bootable'. If so, where.
> Thank you much.
> -nat
> ps. To Paul. Your suggestion is (as you say) last resort.  Hope I can 
> get it to boot into Win, even from cd, since FC will likely be the main 
> os on this machine as well. (My other machine, is FC3 only.)
> 
> >HTH,
> >
> >--Rob
> >
> >  
> >
> 

I guess you need to define which "partition" contains the "WINDOWS"
directory.  That is the one that you would be "booting" from.  So is
that on hdb1 or hdb5.....

But I must admit that my Windows boot process knowledge is getting
mighty rusty, now that I use VMWare to run it.

As I recall, the Windows bootloader is mighty cheesy....  It simply
pointed to the first sector of the "active" partition....  I wonder if
playing with hide and unhide in grub might help.  Can you hide a whole
drive or just a partition, haven't had to do one myself?  But that way
you might be able to allow Windows to think it is the only drive again
which is perhaps what it is expecting?  Windows may be trying to
interpret the first drive's partition table and getting itself confused
as it tried to boot....

That is pretty much my extent of help.... Perhaps others can provide
more fruit...

--Rob