boot halts and restarts PC

[Grant Allan]

hi,

after a short break, here is my current status:

i have installed FC4, and seem to have successfully installed grub into
/dev/hda to dual-boot me into windowsXP or linux.  however, it doesn't
work without intervention:

  if i insert SystemRecoveryCD and ask it to boot from "disk1", then i get
to grub, and everything is fine.  i can start either OS.

  if i reboot without CD or floppy, then my machine just reboots itself
over and over.  i never get as far as the grub screen.

  i can't use windows tools to fix, it seems, because system just freezes
when i try to boot from my XP install media.  when i tried to get the
recovery stuff onto my hard drive (found that on MSDN) it told me to go
away because my disk was the wrong version of XP.  (maybe cos of a
service pack install?  thanks bill)

  is there a linux tool that i can use to diagnose my booting problem and
fix it?

  b.t.w., my partitions on disk1 are NTFS (holding windowsXP), then a
FAT32, then an extended partition that holds linux.

thanks for any ideas,
grant