Re: Please help with XP Professional dual boot

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linuxquestion_at_yahoo.com
Date: 12/01/04


Date: 1 Dec 2004 07:20:05 -0800

Ok, here's an update.

Turns out that there is a difference between:
- reboot
- shut down / power down and power up.

If I reboot, I get the symptoms described at the bottom.

If I shut (power) down completely, and restart, in the top left
hand corner, I get:
GRUB
and a flashing cursor.

Machine is hung. No activity from keyboard. Of course no mouse.

In each case, I still get the choice of Windows, or Linux. I'm
choosing Linux each time.

Any ideas? What is the secret?

linuxquestion@yahoo.com wrote in message news:<672ceaed.0411302033.274a5e88@posting.google.com>...
> Dear experts,
>
> I have succeed at this before, but I am really stumped
> now, so I hope that someone will be able to tell me
> the secret to fix this.
>
>
> Computer:
> Dell 4550. XP Professional.
> Dual hard drives.
> Primary, C: XP only 80 gigs.
> Secondary. For Redhat 2.1 120 gigs
> First partition is extended, then logical /boot
>
>
> Now here is something important. When I bought this
> machine, the primary/only hard drive had two
> partitions in it. The first partition had no drive
> letter assigned and was about 30 megs. It had hardware
> diagnosis software, etc on it. The second partition was
> the C: drive. 80 gigs. I was able to get this to
> dual boot with grub, by overwriting the MBR. That
> actually worked quite well.
>
> However, since then, the main hard drive self-destructed.
> I had this replaced, and have since installed windows
> on this drive. The interesting thing was that it
> was not possible to create the 30 meg partition, and
> still get Windows to ignore it. If I put the Windows
> install on the large partition, it was labelled d:\
>
> NOw, I have tried a number of things to get Redhat to
> install and dual boot. And still no luck.
>
>
> MBR:
> Using the previously successful MBR method:
> - when booting, produced the word: GRUB in the top
> left hand corner and the machine completely hung.
> This happened for both Suse, and for Redhat installations.
>
>
> Using the boot.ini method:
> - used this command:
> dd if=/dev/hdb5 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.bin bs=512 count=1
>
> copied the file linux.bin to c:\
>
> - when the machine boots, it gives me the choice of
> XP, or Linux.
> - when I choose linux, the machine then reboots from
> scratch, and then gives me the same choice.
> - an infinite loop.
> - it should go into the grub menu.
>
>
>
>
> Does anyone know how to get the dual boot to work?
> What is the secret please?
>
>
>
> I'll include some files and output here:
>
> boot.ini:
>
> [boot loader]
> timeout=30
> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
> [operating systems]
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP
> Professional" /fastdetect
> c:\linux.bin="Redhat Linux"
>
>
>
> df -k
>
> Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/hdb6 5162796 135664 4764876 3% /
> /dev/hdb5 101089 13364 82506 14% /boot
> /dev/hdb8 5162796 32828 4867712 1% /home
> /dev/hdb9 5162796 164200 4736340 4% /opt
> /dev/hdb13 10325748 32828 9768400 1% /oracle
> /dev/hdb14 11266328 32828 10661188 1% /oradata
> none 385024 0 385024 0% /dev/shm
> /dev/hdb12 5162796 33536 4867004 1% /tmp
> /dev/hdb10 10325748 1358136 8443092 14% /usr
> /dev/hdb11 5162796 60248 4840292 2% /var
> /dev/fd0 1423 10 1414 1% /mnt/floppy
>
>
>
> file LIsting of /boot
>
> total 9007
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5824 Jun 24 2001 boot.b
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 30 22:50 boot.txt
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 612 Jun 24 2001 chain.b
> drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Nov 30 17:30 grub
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 125307 Nov 30 17:03
> initrd-2.4.9-e.3.img
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 123149 Nov 30 17:02
> initrd-2.4.9-e.3smp.img
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Nov 30 17:02 kernel.h ->
> kernel.h-2.4.9
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 405 Nov 30 17:02 kernel.h-2.4.9
> drwx------ 2 root root 12288 Nov 30 16:54 lost+found
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 23108 Jun 24 2001 message
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Nov 30 17:03 module-info ->
> module-info-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13599 May 3 2002
> module-info-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13599 May 3 2002
> module-info-2.4.9-e.3smp
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 640 Jun 24 2001 os2_d.b
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Nov 30 17:03 System.map ->
> System.map-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 444721 May 3 2002
> System.map-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 466091 May 3 2002
> System.map-2.4.9-e.3smp
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2767809 May 3 2002
> vmlinux-2.4.9-e.3
> -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3097034 May 3 2002
> vmlinux-2.4.9-e.3smp
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Nov 30 17:03 vmlinuz ->
> vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 997736 May 3 2002
> vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.3
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1073371 May 3 2002
> vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.3smp
>
>
>
> file listing of /boot/grub
>
> total 239
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 82 Nov 30 17:30 device.map
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10848 Nov 30 17:30 e2fs_stage1_5
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9744 Nov 30 17:30 fat_stage1_5
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8864 Nov 30 17:30 ffs_stage1_5
> -rw------- 1 root root 738 Nov 30 17:30 grub.conf
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Nov 30 17:30 menu.lst ->
> ./grub.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9248 Nov 30 17:30 minix_stage1_5
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12512 Nov 30 17:30
> reiserfs_stage1_5
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54044 Sep 5 2001 splash.xpm.gz
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 512 Nov 30 17:30 stage1
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 120000 Nov 30 17:30 stage2
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8512 Nov 30 17:30
> vstafs_stage1_5
>
>
>
>
> grub.conf: (- although, it ever gets this far)
>
> # grub.conf generated by anaconda
> #
> # Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this
> file
> # NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
> # all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
> # root (hd1,4)
> # kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb6
> # initrd /initrd-version.img
> #boot=/dev/hdb5
> default=0
> timeout=10
> splashimage=(hd1,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
> title Red Hat Linux Advanced Server (2.4.9-e.3smp)
> root (hd1,4)
> kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.3smp ro root=/dev/hdb6 hdd=ide-scsi
> initrd /initrd-2.4.9-e.3smp.img
> title Red Hat Linux Advanced Server-up (2.4.9-e.3)
> root (hd1,4)
> kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.9-e.3 ro root=/dev/hdb6 hdd=ide-scsi
> initrd /initrd-2.4.9-e.3.img



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