WinXP not booting from GRUB

Fibonacci · #1 27th March 2006, 05:21 AM

Hello.
First of all, I have no experience whatsoever with Linux, so I apologise in advance for any stupidity I might have made, or detail I might have omitted. That being said, I can proceed:

I have three hard drives, partitioned as follows:
·First, PATA, 20GB NTFS, with Windows XP installed on it.
·Second, PATA, one partition of 20GB in which I installed FC5 (so it's ext3, previously FAT32), and another of 60GB FAT32.
·Third, SATA, 250GB FAT32.
I finished downloading the DVD iso for Fedora Core 5 i386 this morning, so I proceeded to the installation on the aforementioned partition. When it came to the part where it checks for other operating systems on the machine, it listed Fedora Core 5 and "Other"; I (wrongly) assumed everything was fine and continued. GRUB was apparently installed on the third hard disk (sda1).
The installation was successfully completed, and I rebooted the computer. Fedora was running flawlessly. I then decided to reboot into Windows, so I chose the "Other" system in the GRUB menu, to find only a black screen with junk characters. Following a friend's advice, I loaded the recovery console from the WinXP installation CD, and ran fixmbr. When I rebooted the system again, it just didn't boot... no Windows, no GRUB (not even a shell), no Fedora, no anything.
Then I disconnected every hard disk except for the first one, and Windows loaded without problems. Connected the second HD, and still without problems. I then tried to reinstall GRUB, so I did what I found by googling: boot linux rescue from the Fedora DVD, and then run the following commands:

Code:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub-install /dev/hda
exit

... to reboot to a black console-like screen where only the letters "GRUB" are visible, and nothing can be typed (so it was not a real console).
I then came back to the windows recovery console, where I ran fixmbr, fixboot, and then rebooted.

Windows is running normally. The Fedora installation is still there, but I can't access it. I have not tried reinstalling, for I fear that the same thing might happen again. I have not yet booted Windows with the third HD connected, but when booting from Knoppix (I'm posting from Knoppix, in fact) I find no unusual files on it.

So... what can I do now to be able to boot Windows and Fedora without problems?

Thank you for your time,

-Fibonacci

Update: I couldn't boot with the third HD. So I am now Linux-less and disk-less.

-Fibonacci

Seve · #2 27th March 2006, 05:52 AM

Hi:
Boot from the FC5 dics and get to chroot /mnt/sysimage
Then fdisk -l at the prompt and have a look at what the output is. You should be able to confirm that your Windows is installed on /dev/hda[according to your post] ...[NTFS and disc size etc..] if so, then at the command line type, grub-install --recheck /dev/hda enter....wait for it to finish, type exit enter type exit enter and reboot and reset your BIOS to boot from hda and you should be good to go.
Seve

Fibonacci · #3 27th March 2006, 06:05 AM

With or without the third HD?

Seve · #4 27th March 2006, 06:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

With or without the third HD?

I understand.

It's okay with all your HD's attached. Just remember to do the fdisk -l first and then you can see where your Windows is installed. You will be able to tell by the size of the disk and the NTFS fromat. Likely, it is /dev/hda, if so then then grub-install -recheck /dev/hda enter...will be good.
Post back your results.
Seve

Fibonacci · #5 27th March 2006, 07:19 AM

Okay. So first I ran fdisk -l, and saw what was in which HD drive. Apparently all drives had a bootable partition (the one with Fedora for the second drive, and the only one for the other two), which is strange, since the 3rd drive contains only personal documents (again, I checked under Knoppix).
Anyway, I cheched that /dev/hda1 was the only NTFS partition, and therefore, WinXP was there. I then ran grub-install --recheck /dev/hda, which after a second ended with "Installation finished. No errors reported." So far, so good.
exit, exit. Reboot. Enter BIOS setup. Boot priority: floppy drive, DVD burner, 3rd HD. In that order. And there were no other options - neither the DVD reader nor the other two HD drives were there, though the BIOS had detected them, so I changed nothing.
Okay, boot... to see the same error message I had seen before:

Code:

Non-system disk or disk error. Insert DOS diskette, and press any key...

And since I couldn't find the "any" key (bad pun, I know), I turned it off, unplugged the 3rd HD, and turned it back on.
To my surprise, it didn't boot this time either. I saw this error message:

Code:

Booting Fedora Core 2.6.somenumbershere

root (hd2,0)

Error 21: Selected disk does not exist.

Press any key to continue...

So I pressed any key, to find something that resembled GRUB, were it not for the fact that it was entirely made of ASCII characters (wasn't GRUB supposed to be graphical?), with two options: Fedora Core somenumbers, which gave the above error message yet again, and "Windows XP Pro", which whas what I had renamed the "Other" system when I was installing Linux, and which produced the following error message:

Code:

Booting Windows XP Pro

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format.

Press any key to continue...

So I had to fixmbr and fixboot from the windows recovery console, and here I am, still Linux-less and HD-less.

Seve · #6 27th March 2006, 07:44 PM

Fibonacci:
From your last post it looks like you did have grub installed, it only required a little fixing up. It must have gotten confused because of the removing / replacing and or changing of HDrives etc. Anyway ..not to worry. So here goes....

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

I have three hard drives, partitioned as follows:
·First, PATA, 20GB NTFS, with Windows XP installed on it.
·Second, PATA, one partition of 20GB in which I installed FC5 (so it's ext3, previously FAT32), and another of 60GB FAT32.
·Third, SATA, 250GB FAT32.

With all of your Hard Drives attached they are most likely mapped / counted / recognized in FC starting at 0, as follows:
/dev/hda = (hd0,0) = First, PATA where you have WinXP installed
/dev/hdb = (hd1,0) = Second PATA where you have FC5 installed.
/dev/sda = (hd2,0) = Your third HD, which is a SATA drive

You should have been able to confirm this when you did the grub-install --recheck /dev/hda
as it would have been part of the output on the screen.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

Booting Fedora Core 2.6.somenumbershere

root (hd2,0)

Error 21: Selected disk does not exist.

Press any key to continue...

We know from the above output that grub is confused as according to your post you installed FC5 on:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

·Second, PATA, one partition of 20GB in which I installed FC5 (so it's ext3, previously FAT32), and another of 60GB FAT32.

which is actually (hd1,0) or /dev/hdb as FC has it mapped.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

Booting Windows XP Pro

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format.

Press any key to continue...

We also see that grub is configured to boot your WinXP from your second HD, which is where you have installed FC5, thus you are getting errors. As WinXP is actually installed on (hd0,0) or /dev/hda

Since your ran fixmbr you will need to install grub again:
linux rescue and from chroot/mnt/sysimage ... grub-install --recheck /dev/hda
[Note: Please write down the output of the drive mappings on the screen] it will help confirm whether some of the drive mapping assumptions posted above make sense.
Re-Boot and set the boot order of your Drives in the BIOS to whatever it was when you only had Windows installled. When the system reboots you should see the normal grub screen loaded (in living colours) showing both FC and Windows as possible choices. If, for some reason (unlikely) you get the black and white grub screen as you had before..don't panic. Just enter and type e to edit the (hdx,0) on the second and third line of FC5 to change it to the proper drive as noted above. Once the changes are made, continue booting and it should load FC5. Once in FC5 you will want to open a terminal login as root and gedit /etc/grub.conf to fix the (hdx,0) sections of both FC5 and WinXP to what they should be.

Seve

Fibonacci · #7 27th March 2006, 11:02 PM

Heh... this time I couldn't even get to chroot. Linux rescue found no Linux partitions on my system (!), so I'm reinstalling. I'll post my results here when I'm done.

Fibonacci · #8 27th March 2006, 11:58 PM

Silly me... I had accidentally disconnected hdb *blushes*. Well, I followed your instructions, and here are the results:

Code:

#fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 2434 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id	System
/dev/hda1	*	1	2420	19438618+	7	HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 81.9 GB, 81964302336 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 9964 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id	System
/dev/hdb1	*	1	2486	19968763+	83	Linux
/dev/hdb2		2487	9963	60059002+	f	W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb5		2487	9963	60058971	b	W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/sda: 251.0 GB, 251000193024 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 30515 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device		Boot	Start	End	Blocks		Id	System
/dev/sda1	*	1	30515	245111706	c	WIN95 FAT32 (LBA)

#grub-install --recheck /dev/hda

(...)

(fd0)	/dev/fd0
(hd0)	/dev/hda
(hd1)	/dev/hdb
(hd2)	/dev/sda

#exit

But it still won't boot with the 3rd drive. I tried changing the boot order on the BIOS, but the only options available are:
· 1st FLOPPY DRIVE
· PM-MAXTOR 6Y250M0 (which is obviously my third drive)
· 4M-HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA
· Disable
... so I had to unplug that drive again and boot without it. I saw the b&w GRUB, as expected, booted into Fedora with your instructions, edited /etc/grub.conf, and now both Windows and Linux are booting fine (THANK YOU!). I saw, though, that GRUB seems to be looking for the splash screen on hd2 - the drive that prevents booting. But I don't want to format it, lest I lose some personal documents I put there to make space for Linux. Is there something that can be done about it?

Thanks again,

-Fibonacci

Seve · #9 28th March 2006, 12:17 AM

Fibonacci:
Glad you got it working...

From your post: WinXP is definately installed on hda and that is where you installed grub...all of which is good. You now need replace PM-MAXTOR 6Y250M0 (which is obviously my third drive) in your BIOS to Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes...this will allow the system to boot as it should. You will not be able to boot from PM-MAXTOR 6Y250M0 (which is obviously my third drive) as the boot loader [grub: is installed on your Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes] drive. If you change this ... your errors should go away.
If you need more help, post back.
Have a look here to continue your setup:
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html
Seve

Fibonacci · #10 28th March 2006, 12:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seve

Fibonacci:
Glad you got it working...

From your post: WinXP is definately installed on hda and that is where you installed grub...all of which is good. You now need replace PM-MAXTOR 6Y250M0 (which is obviously my third drive) in your BIOS to Disk /dev/hda: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes

And how do I do that, if there are no options there other than the ones I already listed?

By the way, I'm posting from Fedora

Thanks again!

Seve · #11 28th March 2006, 01:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

And how do I do that, if there are no options there other than the ones I already listed?

By the way, I'm posting from Fedora

Thanks again!

Fibonacci:
Well........if your BIOS does not allow you to change anything then I guess your stuck. It seems odd that the BIOS would not allow you to pick a different order and or Drive(s) to boot from? As I have no idea what motherboard or BIOS you have? See if there is a more currrent BIOS available from your motherboard's web-site. If so, then flashing the BIOS might be a good idea. [check the BIOS related fixes/changes first to see if it might help]
You will enjoy FC5, once you get a little more familar with it.

Cheers

Seve

Fibonacci · #12 28th March 2006, 01:27 AM

Oh, it does allow me to change the boot order: for each of the three places, the list of options is identical to the one given.
Strange thing is, when I unplug the HD the right one appears on the BIOS options.

I have an Intel D865GLC board.

Thanks for your help anyway.

-Fibonacci

Seve · #13 28th March 2006, 01:49 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fibonacci

Oh, it does allow me to change the boot order: for each of the three places, the list of options is identical to the one given.
Strange thing is, when I unplug the HD the right one appears on the BIOS options.

I have an Intel D865GLC board.

Thanks for your help anyway.

-Fibonacci

I would still look at the intel site and see if there is a BIOS release available. Since, if anyone had an OS installed and added a new SATA drive ....how would they ever be able to boot again without re-installing the OS again?? Dunno, but worth a shot.ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-suppo...leaseNotes.pdf

Cheers
Seve

Fibonacci · #14 28th March 2006, 03:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seve

how would they ever be able to boot again without re-installing the OS again??

It was booting perfectly (and I mean Fedora, not Windows) until I fixmbr'ed for the first time when Windows didn't load.
I think it somehow had Windows' MBR written on it, and since Windows (or any other OS, for that matter) is not installed in that HD, I'll have to somehow remove its MBR so that the BIOS does not assume it is a bootable disk.
... does what I have said make some sense? ^^U

***Firewing1*** · #15 28th March 2006, 03:48 AM

Can you post a (new) output of the files:
/etc/grub.conf
/boot/grub/device.map
and:
$ fdisk -l
although, before you disk -l please put the drives in the right order (disk 1 as master , disk 2 as slave, etc) before fdisk -l
Firewing1