XP+RH9 help

[Davis]

I am a newbie to linux, and this last week has been rough on me. All i want GRUB to do is load Linux. Here's what's goin on:

 

hda1 is XP 40gb NTFS

hdb1 is Linux  4.3gb   EXT3

 

my grub.conf is standard stuff

default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-8)
      root (hd1,0)
      kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=/dev/hdb1=/ hdc=ide-scsi
      initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img
title Windows XP
      rootnoverify (hd0,0)
      chainloader +1
      makeactive
*note i do NOT have a boot partition

 

my device map is nice looking, nothing wrong there| i've checked each file, the grub.conf is pointing to the correct direction

 

I've even done the dd if=/dev/hdb1 od=/mnt/floppy bs=512 count=1 thing. When i select "Linux" from my Win XP load menu, all I get is GRUB _ and it hangs, forever accessing the hard-drive.

 

Many many sites I have found claim to have this to work, I sure as heck can't get it to. Just playing around, I installed GRUB on my MBR and it actually went a little further, it got to 1.5 then croaked on an error(knew it would)

 

If anyone has *any* ideas on a work around or anything to just get Windows and Linux to boot without a boot disk(linux needs one currently) please tell me. I'm willing to format linux, partition hard drives as needed, swap drives, I just can't format my Windows(can't back-up the 20 gig of... important files on my hd)

 

Thanks for any help,

 

Adam Davis