Boot Windows XP from high block number?

David bouncingcats at gmail.com
Fri Apr 3 14:16:12 UTC 2009


On Fri, Apr 3, 2009 at 6:30 PM, vcamatya <no-reply-gw at fcp.surfsite.org> wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> I'm trying to triple boot Fedora 10, XP-64 bit, and xp-32 bit.
> I was hoping if you could provide me some pointers, if it is useful at all for me:

Hi Vinay

> Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines

We must keep in mind that this list is for discussion of *Fedora*
issues (and you do not mention any problem inside Fedora itself) so
shifting focus to other operating systems (OS) could become
inappropriate in this forum. My previous post was to make a specific
point that counter to common advice I'd found it unnecessary to
install multiple OS in a specific physical order on disk as often
stated, if one is prepared to rearrange the partition table (and
repair the mbr) afterward. I felt this might be useful to primarily
linux users who might want to try install another OS after. But this
is not your situation here, you have installed your XP's first. So I
think my previous post is not relevant to you at all.

I have zero experience with or interest in XP and its installation
scripts. Also, I do not use lvm, I have not seen a grub.conf for an
lvm system. So your situation is beyond me in several aspects and I
expect there will be other readers here who can assist you better than
I. Having said that, here's my suggestions.

Your situation is different to the original poster, so it is a good
idea to begin a new thread rather than hijacking this one onto your
issue.

I think parted is not the solution you need; I suggest you focus on
grub. It is powerful and if configured correctly should be able to
boot your other OS.

However some of these other OS seem to be written assuming they are
the only OS on the box. A quick google/linux search "boot logical
partition" for similar situation to yours, first result thread [1]
included:
-----
If you _must_ get this grub setup to work, I suspect you'll have to
find some way to overcome XP's "code tracking" features that maintains
guids and timestamps (and who knows what else) about the boot loader
code/files in the registry. The code you copied no longer matches up
with what XP's registry values say it should be.
-----
So there might be other (non-Fedora) issues for you to research
elsewhere, even if you do get those OS to boot.

The reason I did that search is that it looked odd to me that you have
only one primary partition after your two XP installs, and that your
extended/logical partitions are physically first on the drive. Here
I've always used a primary partition for each OS, but maybe thats not
necessary. Other readers might confirm what is normal for multiple XP
installs.

> Editing Grub.conf (from many suggestions) didn't help.
What forum was that discussion? Can you provide a link, to save us
going over the same here?

If you want to seek help here getting your Fedora install grub to boot
those other OS, it will help to know:
1) In parted output, which partition is XP32 ?
2) In parted output, which partition is XP64 ?
3) Your entire grub.conf
4) (Your parted info again if you start a new thread).
5) The *exact* error message you see in each failed boot situation.

Good luck with it. At least you have the best of the 3 OS running ok ;)

David

[1] http://linux.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.os.linux/2004-03/0318.html




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