XP/FC6 on separate drives : boot how??

[Doctor Who]

On 1/3/07, Beartooth <Beartooth at swva.net> wrote:
> I've just slogged through a very long  thread, commencing 04/06/06, on
> a topic similar to what I need to ask. Most of the substantive part was
> over my head; but I *think* it was largely if not entirely about FC4-5,
> with occasional excursions back to FC2. So what I can't follow -- I'm a
> not quite clueless power user, and no technoid at all -- may just possibly
> be out of date. At any rate, let's take it again from the top. Pretty
> please.
>
>    An electronic friend who not only speaks hardware but has probably
> forgotten more about computer and the Net is having an odd problem.
>
>      He's in the midst of very kindly assembling a machine to fit my
> budget and his expertise; we worked our way through my needs and the
> options, one decision being individual hard drives for XP and for FC6. He
> seems to have it together, physically, already. He writes :
>
> > I need the recipe you used for the Linux, Windoze dual boot. I've tried
> > every recipe I have (spent most of the day yesterday on it) and so far
> > can't get it to work. I can get each OS to boot by switching the drive
> > boot priority from the BIOS but not by using the Windoze or Grub boot
> > loaders.
>
>      The only secret I know, as I've told him, is that XP has to go on
> first. But surely he knows that better than I. I guessed it might be a
> matter of some wrinkle needed in grub.conf -- so I sent him copies of my
> present ones, on a machine with FC6 only, and on one that dual-boots
> successfully (with only one hard drive afaik).
>
>      Still no joy. He writes :
>
> > I would appreciate it if you would query your lists. So far, my
> > configuration is:
>
>   sda1: 512 meg fat32
>   sda2: 75 gig ntfs
>   sdb1: 76 gig ext3
>
> > Windoze is installed on the first drive with the boot loader on the
> > fat32 partition. FC-6 is on the second drive. Linux did recognize
> > Windoze during the install and configured Grub to the dual boot. I also
> > tried the reverse using a LINUX.BIN file (created with dd containing the
> > linux /boot partition) residing in the fat32 partition and loaded from
> > the Windoze boot.ini. Only way I can boot to either drive is by swapping
> > the drive priority in the bios. My best guess at this point is it has
> > something to do with the SATA drives. I haven't tried it with PATA
> > drives yet.
>
>      -- and, in another reply :
>
>
> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Beartooth wrote:
> [...]
> > title Other
> >        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
> >         chainloader +1
>
> > I'm running the same config in my grub.conf (menu.lst).
>
> > I noticed that your dual boot machine is not invoking a Volume
> > Group:
>
> > root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
>
> > but
>
> > root=LABEL=/
>
> > Wonder if I need to manually configure the Linux partition?
>
>      Can anyone help?
>

I have found it easiest when booting multiple OSs to use gag
<gag.sourceforge.net>