win 2000 rejects grub installation

[Milan Durovic]

Hi,

I tried to use grub to dual boot linux and windows 2000. I first
installed Windows 2000 from OEM CD on a blank hard disk, then I
installed Linux (Debian 2.2 with all the security patches). Then I
created a GRUB boot floppy and I could boot either OS using command line
interface (kernel ..., boot). Finally, I installed the grub on the hard
disk, and rebooted. The menu appeared and when I selected Linux, it
booted successfully. When I tried to boot windows 2000, I got the
following message:

Windows 2000 could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem...

I found on Microsoft's site an article that implicates that the above
message appears when the hard drive signature, stored in boot.ini, does
not match. It looks like Windows 2000 did not like it when the
stage1_lba was written to the hard disk's MBR. The article explicitly
mentioned that in case of a changes to the MBR, the above message would
appear.

I read, with envy, many reports of people using grub to dual boot
windows 2000, none mentioning the problem I had. The version of the grub
that comes with Debian 2.2 is 0.5.93. I thought of downloading and
trying the lates grub version, but somehow it doesn't look like it's a
grub problem, but the problem that Windows 2000 makes a checksum of MBR.
Can it be made to ignore it?

Help is appreciated.

Regards,

Milan