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arfett

Member

Registered: 2008-04-26

Posts: 11

[SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

sda1 XP
sda2 Arch
sda3 ntfs storage partition

I Installed XP after linux and used grub to set the root to hd0,1 and setup hd0, I now can boot from the GRUB bootloader into linux just fine, but when I attempt to boot XP I get "Error 12: Invalid device requested"

My menu.lst has this at the bottom:

# (1) Windows
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Any ideas?

Last edited by arfett (2008-08-16 01:06:43)

violagirl23

Member

Registered: 2008-01-24

Posts: 184

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

Are you sure (hd0,0) is the right one? When you do cfdisk sda, is it actually for sure listed as sda1? I only ask because mine has some weird storage backup thing at the beginning, meaning it's actually sda2, so I put (hd0,1) for mine.

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arfett

Member

Registered: 2008-04-26

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

I am absolutely confused as to what is going on here.  During Install of ArchLinux it found that my first partition with XP on it was SDA1.  I just ran cfdisk thinking it would show the same thing, but apparently the installed version of ArchLinux thinks it is SDA5 now.  I tried hd0,6 which didn't work so I decided to start throwing in random numbers.

Using hd0,2 worked and loaded xp without any issues.  Can anyone tell me how exactly hd0,2 is correlating to the first partition on the drive and shouldn't it be hd0,6 if it is SDA5?

Any info on this would be greatly appreciated.

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,937

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Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

post the output of "fdisk -l"

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violagirl23

Member

Registered: 2008-01-24

Posts: 184

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

I thought it started and 0 and would be hd0,4 if it was sda5, but maybe that's just me. So (hd0,2) would refer to sda3, unless I'm remembering incorrectly. What does it do for that one? And what does cdfisk claim sda3 IS?

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Inxsible

Administrator

From: Chicago burbs

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,020

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

Like Viola mentioned, (hd0,4) = sda5

But given that you can log into XP with (hd0,2) - means that your XP is on sda3.

sudo fdisk -l

and

df -h

should give you more info on what partitions you have and also the mount points on it

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RabidWolf

Member

From: WI,USA

Registered: 2007-01-20

Posts: 31

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Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

Looks like you ran out of primary partitions and ended up creating an extended partition containing logical partitions.
It "may" be that you also have a "hidden" partition in there (which would be counted as a primary) if windows was preinstalled on this disk by a big vendor.
You are only allowed 4 primary partitions on a hdd.

1.primary(hd0,0) =sda1
2.primary(hd0,1) =sda2
3.primary(hd0,2) =sda3
4.primary(hd0,3) =sda4

or

1.primary(hd0,0) =sda1
2.primary(hd0,1) =sda2
3.primary(hd0,2) =sda3
4.primary/extended(hd0,3) =sda4 (1 partition which acts as a container for logical partitions)
5.logical(hd0,4) =sda5
6.logical(hd0,5) =sda6
and so on, up to about a dozen or so max "I think"

This may not be the most technical way to explain it, but this is how I veiw it in MY head.

hope it helps

Last edited by RabidWolf (2008-08-15 18:05:45)

SiC

Member

From: Liverpool, England

Registered: 2008-01-10

Posts: 428

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

I had a similar problem when I installed Arch onto the third drive in my machine, it's layout is this:

SATA1 - /dev/sda = Windows XP (NTFS)
SATA5 - /dev/sdb = Mac OS X (HPFS)
SATA6 - /dev/sdc = Arch (ReiserFS)

The problem came when I tried to boot arch, I'd set grub as having hd(2,1), and it failed to boot entirely. When I changed it to Hd(0,1) it worked fine.  I think GRUB rearranges the drives to suit itself rather than necessarily using the drive layout in /dev or as the BIOS reports it. I could be wrong, but that's just what personal experience tells me.

arfett

Member

Registered: 2008-04-26

Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot XP with GRUB

Thanks for the help, guys.  It looks like GRUB just kind of assigns the disks to whatever it wants for me.  I even messed around recreating the partitions with linux and installing linux first then XP and it never seems to correlate to the actual partition location on the disk as the BIOS/cfdisk sees it.  Good old trial and error works fine for me to get GRUB setup.