On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Rangeen Basu <sherry151@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 9:32 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan <jonrysh@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> I have installed Linux and Windows XP on my hard drive and am trying to >> set up a dual boot. Unfortunately XP is installed at a high sector, >> namely block 204438565. The partition table starts: >> >> Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System >> /dev/sda1 63 2040254 1020096 83 Linux >> /dev/sda2 2040255 104438564 51199155 83 Linux >> /dev/sda3 * 104438565 206836874 51199155 b W95 FAT32 >> ... >> >> I have set up grub.conf as follows: >> >> ... >> title Windows >> rootnoverify (hd0,2) >> chainloader +1 >> >> The grub initialization screen starts OK, but when I select Windows, >> grub fails with a disk read error. >> >> Questions: >> >> (1) Is grub.conf set up right for this partition table? >> >> (2) Is it possible to boot XP at this location, or do I have to >> reinstall Linux and XP with their partition reversed, so as to get the >> XP partition to a smaller block number? >> >> (3) Is there some quicker way to get the partitions reversed other than >> reinstallation? >> > I read somewhere that windows needs to be the first partition to boot > properly. So you may try installing windows at hd0,0 and try again. Jonathan, I may have better news: It is widely-quoted advice that (#1): a Windows boot partition must be the first partition on the drive. Most advice suggests installing Windows first. I found this annoying in several scenarios. However recent problem solving activity on this machine led me to experiment and discover that while this is close to the truth, it is a "sufficient" but not "necessary" condition. What apparently _is_ essential for the Windows boot loader is specifically that (#2): the Windows boot partition is the first entry in the drive partition table. In most situations without intervention, the requirement (#2) is achieved as a consequence of (#1). However, in a situation where the first partition on the drive is already in use, I have found it is possible to install Windows on a higher numbered partition and then delete and recreate the parition table entries in the correct order. For example, I did this on the hard drive on this box, it currently has 3 bootable partitions: Windows 2000, MSDOS, and Fedora 9 shown below. The following parted output shows each partition in its physical sequence by ascending "Start" sector number. Note that the "Number" column (= the order in which the partition table entries were created) is not in the same order. 3=\boot 2=MSDOS 1=Windows 2000 4=extended partition containing logical partitions 5,6,7,8 5=FAT32 6=swap 7=\ 8=\home [root@kablamm david]# /sbin/parted GNU Parted 1.8.8 Using /dev/sda Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) print free Model: ATA ST320014A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 20.0GB Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 3 32.3kB 107MB 107MB primary ext2 2 107MB 370MB 263MB primary fat16 hidden 1 370MB 5618MB 5248MB primary fat32 boot, lba 4 5618MB 20.0GB 14.4GB extended lba 5 5618MB 10.9GB 5248MB logical fat32 lba 6 10.9GB 11.9GB 1077MB logical linux-swap 7 11.9GB 18.4GB 6498MB logical ext3 8 18.4GB 20.0GB 1579MB logical ext3 (parted) unit s (parted) print free Model: ATA ST320014A (scsi) Disk /dev/sda: 39102336s Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B Partition Table: msdos Number Start End Size Type File system Flags 3 63s 208844s 208782s primary ext2 2 208845s 722924s 514080s primary fat16 hidden 1 722925s 10972394s 10249470s primary fat32 boot, lba 4 10972395s 39102209s 28129815s extended lba 5 10972458s 21221864s 10249407s logical fat32 lba 6 21221928s 23326379s 2104452s logical linux-swap 7 23326443s 36017729s 12691287s logical ext3 8 36017793s 39102209s 3084417s logical ext3 I achieved this by first installing Fedora 9 with blank spaces for the fat partitions, and then by hiding each previously installed primary partitions while installing the next OS. This achieved the physical sequence on the drive as shown above, but with parition numbers in ascending order. If I recall correctly, at this point Windows would not boot. I then made a note of all the start and end sector data, and then used parted commands "rm" and "mkpart" and "set" to delete and recreate the partition table shown above. Why bother? So I can start both Windows and MSDOS from /boot/grub without using Windows ntldr. I kept the \boot and MSDOS partitions small, so that the start of the Windows partition was not too far from the start of the drive. I have not tested a scenario where this is not the case, and would be very interested to hear back from you to further my knowledge if grub is able to directly boot Windows in your situation. Its also necessary to hide the two Micro$oft operating sytems from each other; I achieve this in /boot/grub/grub.conf as follows: title Windows 2000 hide (hd0,1) unhide (hd0,0) rootnoverify (hd0,0) makeactive chainloader +1 title MSDOS 6.20 hide (hd0,0) unhide (hd0,1) rootnoverify (hd0,1) makeactive chainloader +1 If you have only one Micro$oft OS then this may not be necessary. At some point you may encounter grub having trouble locating the correct boot partition. So before you start ensure that you an alternative method of booting into linux in case your hdd grub fails. Then use that to boot and reinstall grub, see "info grub". Once I had a paper record of the parition table, I didnt lose any data in this situation. Warning: fiddling with the partition table can result in data on the drive becoming inaccessible. Do not attempt any of this this unless you are confident and have backups. You will need or develop a strong knowledge of parted and grub. But if you are that way inclined I knew nothing when I started and was able to achieve what I desired. Hope this helps, David -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
