Fedora Core 3/Windows XP Dual Boot Problem

[Orchrist]

Okay, the Windows file system is mounted and everything looks okay. Now what?

[Orchrist]

This may be completely a completely unrelated problem, but I figured I'd put it here anyway.

I updated the kernel from 2.6.9-1.667 to 2.6.10-1.770_FC3 using up2date. It told me to reboot, which I did. On restarting it gave me 1 line saying GRUB and hung.

I went into recovery mode using the Fedora CD and looked at the grub.conf file. Everything seemed to be okay, both kernel boots were there and the files were in /boot like they should be, so I thought maybe the two kernels were conflicting. I commented out the 9-1 kernel and rebooted. Same thing. Then I decommented the 9-1 and commented the 10-1, so Grub should see the file as being exactly the same as it was before. Reboot, same thing.

How could the kernel install have screwed up Grub so badly?

[pbharris]

hello,
the kernel added another entry, but should noy affect the chainloader option.

I am wondering if the IDE drive is set up as a raid device - i have not seen that entry for an regular IDE drive - but i am running core II, so that may have changed.

BTW - I forgot to mention, the word other is just a label - you can call it MS Windows, Frank or whatever you want.

Also when a device has a /dev/sd<x> designation it is set up as a SCSI device, there is nothing wrong with this and I did it my slef to my SATA drives, but I needed to compile my kernel a certain way. Is the 160 G drive on some controller besides the main chipset? e.g. Si3114 ....

How does the 160 G drive show up in the BIOS? Under the IDE drives? I think I would change that entry in the device map to /dev/hda and see what happens - the worst that can happen is are the same point you are at now - e.g. an unbootable MS Windows parition. It is Linux identifing the SATA drive as SCSI and the OS that needs it set up that way for some reason.

[Orchrist]

I've got the SATA drive plugged into a VIA port on my mobo. There are also two Promise ports, but I don't think either cotroller is the "main" one. As near as I can tell, they just have different RAID options.

The BIOS doesn't show the 160 on any of the IDE channels, so I assume it actually sees it as a SATA. I go the impression while trying to install it that SATA drives are considered to be SCSIs by a lot of software.

I honestly don't see how the 30 could be set up as a raid. The setup of that one was pretty standard. I did install it as a slave because I thought originally that I would use it as the secondary hard drive.

I'll try changing the drive name and see if it works.

Edit: Nope. Didn't even seem to notice.

Grub should be able to boot through the mbr of the other drive, right? Windows doesn't need to have the boot on its own boot sector?

[pbharris]

hummss..... okay.

You are using Logical Volume Manager - which is not raid, something else and should only concern the Linux partition.

I thought Windows does need its own boot thngy - but I am not sure, have not used MS Windows in years (at least not at home...). But this is there because MS Windows is boot fine when you set the other drive in the BIOS.

I was hoping it would be in the device map because I just went through this myself (had grub on IDE, switched to a an all SATA system).

Only 1 partition on the MS Windows drive?

[Orchrist]

Yep, only one partition.

[Orchrist]

Okay, so it turns out that WindowsXP absolutely refuses to boot unless it is on the primary drive. I put the boot loader on the mbr of the 160 and it worked fine.

Thanks for your help.

[10Dedfish]

as a point, windows always has to be on the primary.

[samthebadcat]

Hey guys,

I was having the same problem (dual booting Shrike and WIN XP separate HDDs using GRUB) and following your thread....

My question is do I copy the GRUB bootloader to the WIN XP drive (which files do I need to copy and where do I put them) and also do I need to change the grub.conf file? --other than changing the the Linux drive from (hd 0,0) to (hd1,0) and vice versa with the Win XP drive --

[pbharris]

hi samthebadcat -
you should not need to modify any files - running grub-install /dev/<correct drive> should do it, eg. grub-install /dev/hda