[Novalug] XP/FC6 install trouble

Michael Hughes itismike@gmail.com
Wed Jan 3 23:38:48 EST 2007


Hi Beartooth,

I am not familiar with any changes necessary regarding SATA drives,
but I have a lot of experience installing Linux as a dual boot with
Windows and here is my best solution:

I have had Linux hose my Windows installation several times when
leaving Windows as the first partition/drive.  But as you know,
Windows needs to be installed on the first drive.  The workaround that
I have used (with 95% success rate * ) is to install the operating
systems following the following steps:

1.  Do a traditional install of Windows on the Primary Master HD
2.  Remove the Windows drive from that position and put it somewhere
else (Primary Slave, Secondary...whatever - but connect it somewhere
so Linux recognizes it in the next step).
3.  Place a blank HD back in the Primary Master position and install
Linux on it.  Linux will most likely find the Windows OS and offer to
add it to the boot sequence.
4.  Add the following two 'map' statements to the file:
/boot/grub/menu.lst.  As far as Windows is concerned, this swaps your
Windows drive back into Primary Master position before it even boots:
# title         Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
root (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

5.  Make a backup copy of your menu.lst file (or at least these 6
lines).  Linux wipes it out every time your kernel gets updated. (*)
6.  At your earliest convenience, boot into Windows and open Computer
Management > Disk Management.  Locate your Linux partition and
right-click it and choose 'Remove'.  This prevents Windows from
offering to format this 'unformatted drive' if someone attempts to
access it.

(*) the 5% hit to my success rate is because Linux likes to overwrite
changes you made to the menu.lst file.  Make a backup of it as
described and you should be fine.

Good Luck!
-Mike

On 1/3/07, Beartooth <karhunhammas@lserv.com> wrote:
>         An electronic friend who not only speaks hardware but has
> probably forgotten more about computer and the Net is having an
> odd problem.
>
>         He's in the midst of very kindly assembling a machine to
> fit my budget and his expertise; we worked our way through my
> needs and the options, one decision being individual hard drives
> for XP and for FC6. He seems to have it together, physically,
> already. He writes :
>
> > I need the recipe you used for the Linux, Windoze dual boot.
> > I've tried every recipe I have (spent most of the day yesterday
> > on it) and so far can't get it to work. I can get each OS to
> > boot by switching the drive boot priority from the BIOS but not
> > by using the Windoze or Grub boot loaders.
>
>         The only secret I know, as I've told him, is that XP has
> to go on first. But surely he knows that better than I. I guessed
> it might be a matter of some wrinkle needed in grub.conf -- so I
> sent him copies of my present ones, on a machine with FC6 only,
> and on one that dual-boots successfully (with only one hard drive
> afaik).
>
>         Still no joy. He writes :
>
> > I would appreciate it if you would query your lists. So far, my
> > configuration is:
>
>   sda1: 512 meg fat32
>   sda2: 75 gig ntfs
>   sdb1: 76 gig ext3
>
> > Windoze is installed on the first drive with the boot loader on
> > the fat32 partition. FC-6 is on the second drive. Linux did
> > recognize Windoze during the install and configured Grub to the
> > dual boot. I also tried the reverse using a LINUX.BIN file
> > (created with dd containing the linux /boot partition) residing
> > in the fat32 partition and loaded from the Windoze boot.ini.
> > Only way I can boot to either drive is by swapping the drive
> > priority in the bios. My best guess at this point is it has
> > something to do with the SATA drives. I haven't tried it with
> > PATA drives yet.
>
>         -- and, in another reply :
>
>
> > On Tue, 2 Jan 2007, Beartooth wrote:
> [...]
> > title Other
> >        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
> >         chainloader +1
>
> > I'm running the same config in my grub.conf (menu.lst).
>
> > I noticed that your dual boot machine is not invoking a Volume
> > Group:
>
> > root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
>
> > but
>
> > root=LABEL=/
>
> > Wonder if I need to manually configure the Linux partition?
>
>         Can anyone help?
>
> --
> Beartooth Staffwright, Neo-Redneck, Double Retiree,
> Not Quite Clueless Linux Power User
> I have precious (very precious) little idea where up is.
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