Grub / dual boot question

crotty · n00b Joined: 25 Apr 2002 Posts: 70

Right now i have gentoo on my single hard disk. Recently I got another hard disk, and i would like to install windows xp on it. I tried to install win xp on the second (slave) disk with both disks in the computer, but xp needed a partition on the master drive (that holds gentoo), so i would have to delete a master drive partition (losing a gentoo partition)
So what i'd like to do is take out the gentoo disk, and leave the windows disk in as the slave disk. If I install win xp on that disk, and put my gentoo drive back in as the master, can i simply add:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
to /boot/grub/menu.lst, then run /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda ?
Is this a legit way to put win xp on my second hard disk?
Is there a howto specifically on how to add win xp/2000 boot to an existing linux install?
Thanks in advance...

TheWart · Posted: Sun May 26, 2002 4:12 am Post subject:

hmm, almost everywhere I have read basically say to do Windows first, as it is very finicky. You may be able to pull off your setup, but I am not sure if it will se the HD because it is slave.
_________________
Face it, we are all noobs.

On the box it said it was designed for Win XP or better, so why won't it work with Linux?

fghellar · Posted: Mon May 27, 2002 3:14 am Post subject:

Windows does not like to (or is not smart enough to) work from anything other than the primary partition on the first hard disk.

I'd suggest you swap your disks, leaving the Windows disk as hd0 and the Linux disk as hd1. You'll only need to edit some config files (e.g. fstab, menu.lst) and install grub into the new hd0. Linux will continue to work just as before.
_________________
| www.gentoo.org | www.tldp.org | www.google.com |

lx · Posted: Tue May 28, 2002 1:15 pm Post subject:

You can swap disks with grub (0.9.1 at least maybe 0.9.0 alsa)like this,

grub> map (hd0) (hd1)
grub> map (hd1) (hd0)

Still I don't think thil helps booting XP, maybe if you change the boot.ini file, because XP probably ain't using the bios table and sees the correct master/slave. Stupid windows, linux on second harddisk is easy lol.

Cya, lX
_________________
"Remember there's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.", Frank Zappa

count · Posted: Tue May 28, 2002 2:20 pm Post subject:

I agree that Windows should be installed first and be on your primary (master) disk. Windows is a whiny little bitch when it comes to that stuff.

But onece you get everything installed you will need to tweek your grub.conf (or menu.lst) file to get it to boot to XP.

Here's what it would look like:

# Begin XP
title Stupid Windows XP
rootnoverify(hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
# the end

I had a friend who I got to install Linux and he was having a problem where grub just wouldn't load XP, but he added this and everything is good

Hope this helps
_________________
- Joseph Monti
_________________
This message is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation. For more info visit http://joemonti.org/

lasa · Posted: Tue May 28, 2002 3:07 pm Post subject:

You don't have to fiddle that much. Just rip out your master disk (containing your complete gentoo installation) and let the other disk be master while you install XP, then put back the gentoo disk and set windows to slave. The grub entry for XP will look like:

rizzo · Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2002 8:23 pm Post subject:

Why is this thread in the "Off the Wall" forum? I just found it while troubleshooting a similar problem for a friend when I noticed the odd categorization. Definitely doesn't belong here, IMHO.

rac · Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2002 8:27 pm Post subject: