Re: windows XP NTFS\redhat 7.2

[Tom Lane]

I see in the bug-grub archives that you wrote:
>> That's not the issue with NTFS OS booting - GRUB can chainload Windows NT
>> 4 and 2000 without a problem, but I'm not 100% sure that it will work with
>> XP (I've heard it does weird partition stuff, plus the fact that it may
>
> I chainload my XP Prof without problems. However, you must "reinstall"
> grub after installing XP.

I'm having no luck getting GRUB to boot Win XP Pro, and wonder if you
could spare the time to compare notes and figure out what you did right
and I did wrong.

I'm using GRUB 0.90 from the RH 7.2 distribution.  What I did was:

1. In Win XP installer, delete all existing partitions, then create one
50MB partition (intending this to be /boot) and one 10GB partition for
Windows.  (I later discovered that XP made this partition be a logical
partition, ie /dev/hda5.)  Install Win XP on the 10GB partition, using
NTFS format.

2. Install RH 7.2, creating root and swap partitions in the remaining
logical-partition space, and requesting GRUB to be installed on the
/boot partition (I read somewhere that installing GRUB in the MBR was
not good with Win NT, and assumed that that carries over to XP as well).

The RH installer set up the following commands in GRUB's config file
for Windows:
                rootnoverify (hd0,4)
                chainloader +1
which seems correct as far as I can tell.  But when I try to execute
these commands, either from the menu or from command prompt, the machine
crashes at the "boot" step.  I can't really tell if the crash is before
or after control's been handed off to the Windows loader, though I
suspect it may be after.

Perhaps I need to force Windows to use a primary partition not a logical
partition?  Perhaps putting GRUB on the MBR would've been the right
move?  Any tips would be much appreciated.

                        regards, tom lane