Re: XP+RH9 help

[cr]

On Saturday 16 August 2003 17:16, Davis wrote:
> I am a newbie to linux, and this last week has been rough on me. All i want
> GRUB to do is load Linux. Here's what's goin on:
>
> hda1 is XP 40gb NTFS
> hdb1 is Linux  4.3gb   EXT3
>
> my grub.conf is standard stuff
> default=0
> timeout=10
> splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
>       root (hd1,0)
>       kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=/dev/hdb1=/ hdc=ide-scsi
>       initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
> title Windows XP
>       rootnoverify (hd0,0)
>       chainloader +1
>       makeactive
> *note i do NOT have a boot partition
>
>
> my device map is nice looking, nothing wrong there| i've checked each file,
> the grub.conf is pointing to the correct direction
>
> I've even done the dd if=/dev/hdb1 od=/mnt/floppy bs=512 count=1 thing.
> When i select "Linux" from my Win XP load menu, all I get is GRUB _ and it
> hangs, forever accessing the hard-drive.
>
> Many many sites I have found claim to have this to work, I sure as heck
> can't get it to. Just playing around, I installed GRUB on my MBR and it
> actually went a little further, it got to 1.5 then croaked on an error(knew
> it would)
>
> If anyone has *any* ideas on a work around or anything to just get Windows
> and Linux to boot without a boot disk(linux needs one currently) please
> tell me. I'm willing to format linux, partition hard drives as needed, swap
> drives, I just can't format my Windows(can't back-up the 20 gig of...
> important files on my hd)
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> Adam Davis

I was booting off a floppy for yonks.   (If its any consolation, Red Hat 
boots off a floppy much quicker than Debian does   :(

But anyway, you could check your PC  BIOS to see what it says for the hard 
drive type setting (Normal,  Large or LBA) -  Grub seems to prefer LBA.   

cr