Dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu: XP won't boot.

[Dotan Cohen]

> My guess would be that Windows gets confused from not being on the first
> (BIOS) disk any more as it was when installed.

Does Windows know that it is on the boot disk or not? I've never had
this problem before, and I have installed dual-boot systems in the
past.


> Maybe it's as easy as changing the mapping of the drives, i. e. adding
> map (hd0) (hd1)
> map (hd1) (hd0)
> to the Windows entry in GRUB's menu.lst.
>

I have never known about that, thanks. I will try it this week.

> If that doesn't work, what I'd do (from memory aka untested):
> - Reset the BIOS to boot from the Windows disk,
> - install GRUB in the Windows disk's MBR with root pointing to the
> appropriate partition on sdb/(hd1),

I don't want to touch the Windows disk as it is a pirate install and I
won't fix it if I break it. I only fix legal Windows.


> - create an entry in GRUB's menu.lst that chainloads Windows, something like
> rootnoverify (hd0,0)
> chainloader +1
> should do if Windows is installed on the disk's first partition.
>
> An alternative could be:
> - Reset BIOS to boot from Windows disk,
> - install GRUB in some other location - for example the MBR of the
> second disk,
> - copy the second disk's MBR (or at least the part containing GRUB's
> boot code) to a file on the Windows partition, say C:\linux.bin

I did not know that this was possible. I will google this. If you have
an informative link to share, I'd appreciate that too. Thanks!

> - add an entry to XP's boot configuration file C:\boot.ini like
> c:\linux.bin="Ubuntu Linux"
> This way, XP's boot loader should give you the option to start your
> Linux install.
>

This does sound promising, and interesting!

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://what-is-what.com
http://gibberish.co.il