Originally Posted by
F.User_4_Life
ok now what happens when i have the drive with the xp on it plugged in is that xp boots up the mbr for that drive is dominant over the other.
To me, there are two issues here. One is to make the Fedora drive boot when the XP drive is plugged in (I guess that means its an external USB drive). And the other unrelated issue is to make GRUB boot XP.
First I don't think you are describing the sequence of events during booting accurately. It may help you to understand that better. See, XP does not "boot up the mbr" for its drive. What actually happens is that one of your drives is set to be first in the boot order in your computer's BIOS setup. At boot time, the BIOS finds that drive and loads the boot code of its master boot record into memory to be executed. After that happens, the booting sequence continues on. If the BIOS does not find that drive, it generally moves on to the next drive in the boot order. That may explain why XP boots when the XP drive is plugged in, and Fedora boots when the XP drive is not plugged in. Maybe you should get into your computer's BIOS setup and study the drive boot order. You might find that changing the Fedora drive to first will consistently boot Fedora regardless of the state of the XP drive.
Next, if what I just said was correct, then adding a section to the grub.conf should allow GRUB to boot XP. Check the fdisk again after any BIOS changes. If, for example, the XP partition remains /dev/sdg1, then try this for XP in the grub.conf. Add it at the end.
Code:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd6,0)
map (hd0) (hd6)
map (hd6) (hd0)
chainloader +1
If after changes to the BIOS, the XP drive is no longer /dev/sdg, then change my example appropriately. If, just for example, the XP drive where to be /dev/sdb making the XP partition /dev/sdb1, then the grub.conf section for XP might be like this...
Code:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
See what I mean? You change it to whatever it needs to be. It's even okay to guess at the XP partition in the grub.conf. It does no harm to guess wrongly. But when you change it for the drive, change the drive number in all three places in the example like I did. Don't change the partition because according to the fdisk, the XP partition will be the first (and only) partition on the drive.