Windows XP, Gentoo, and Grub

coondog · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 4:44 am Post subject: Windows XP, Gentoo, and Grub

I have a desktop with two hard drives. My linux one being my primary ide and my windows being secondary. I have tried to use LILO, but for some reason won't boot that partition. It doesn't even give me an error, it just hangs.

I then tried to use GRUB as a boot manager. I think i'll stick with it ... like it better, but anyways, it does the samething and I know that my grub.conf is setup right, any ideas. I think it has something to do with the fact that Windows XP needs to put some files of it's own on the primary hard disk in order to be able to boot.

Any Ideas Anyone please help !!!

whatalotta · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 6:20 am Post subject:

I think windows needs to be installed within the first (1kbytes?), on the first HD, or it will not boot up properly. I think I remember reading that someplace. Not exactly sure what the space limitation is before it, but I know it's small. You might want to swap HD postions and reconfigure. Put grub on the MBR of the Windows drive and try again.

porter · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 29 Jan 2003 Posts: 95

To solve this problem, you have to describe you problem more detailed. It would be very useful, if you described, which error message occurs when grub hangs.
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Pubare · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 11:00 am Post subject:

Are the hard drives on seperate IDE channels, or did you mean the XP drive is a slave? Did you install grub to the primary master or MBR or elsewhere? Post your grub.conf as well just to be on the safe side... Do you get the grub prompt, an error message, or nothing at all? Are both drives still active in fdisk?

nsahoo · l33t Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 618

I have exactly the same problem, but, I use lilo. When I changed the lilo.conf to

NSpacer

I think I recall seeing that you want your bootloader on the main drive, but Windows on it as well. And you want Linux on the secondary drive.

I could be remembering things incorrectly.

tomk · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 10:52 pm Post subject:

Yep that's definitely the problem. Windows has to live on the first disk and Linux on the second one. The way it works is that Windows is stupid and Linux is clever.
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nsahoo · l33t Joined: 17 Jul 2003 Posts: 618

my bad luck i guess then. but, i think you can make your comp boot from the secondary disk by changing the bios setting just before booting, is that right? it's a pain, but, not as bad as having to open the case and switch disks.

tomk · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2003 5:00 am Post subject:

AFAIK this will not work unless there is a master boot record at the begining of the second disk, but windows puts the mbr on the first disk (which is why it sometimes messes up your boot loader after a re-install). Unless you can get Windows to add it's mbr to the second disk I think you'll have to get the screwdriver out. Anyway taking your computer to bits isn't a pain, it's good fun :wink:

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Rodent · Posted: Thu Nov 27, 2003 8:41 pm Post subject:

I didn't really read this hole thread as I don't have time but,

for grub if Windows is on a slave drive you need to use the map commands, here see mine

coondog · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 4:29 pm Post subject:

that's awesome thank you for your help ...
one other thing I can't quite figure out is, my time on my laptop keeps displaying 5 hours behind but when i type date -u then it works just fine ... how do i setup my computer for the UTC time ?

Rodent · Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2003 6:11 pm Post subject:

To set up your clock for UTC time you need to first set your time zone, I quote from the install guide: