Problem configuring GRUB for dual-booting Win XP on SATA, FC5 on IDE

[b82b14b7]

Hi, thanks for taking a look at this.

I've only recently started using Linux (as of earlier today), I did spend a good few hours searching for an answer to this problem, which is probably something simple, before posting here.

I have four hard drives (details in signature), Windows XP is installed on my 36Gb SATA Raptor drive, with the 250Gb SATA and 80Gb IDE drives being used for Windows storage/backup, both NTFS, earlier today I installed FC5 in the 38Gb IDE drive which went fine, however I cannot boot FC5 without chaing around my boot options in Setup, e.g. - if I want to boot Win XP I need to tell my machine to look at the drive with Windows on it first and if I want to boot FC5 I need to tell it to look at the Linux drive first.

Now when I boot Linux GRUB will load fine, however it only gives me the option to boot FC5 - I've obviously completely screwed up installing GRUB. I've been trying to fix it by editing the grub.conf file but I can't seem to find the right name for my Windows drive, here's what my grub.conf file looks like now -

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.15-1.2054_FC5)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
	initrd /initrd-2.6.15-1.2054_FC5.img
title Windows XP
	rootnoverify (sd0,0)
	chainloader +1

I've tried experimenting around with the name of the Windows drive but I can't get it to work. : /

Like I mentioned before, this is probably something extremely simple, but if someone could help me fix GRUB for dual-booting it would be nice, thank for looking.

EDIT:- I'm going to have to sleep now but I'll check up on this in the morning.

[silvagroup]

b82b14b7,
What do people call you b, b8, bbb, bad joke I know.
Anyway, Not being an expert either but having had to mess with grub a few times I would say your grub should be looking at either hd2,0 or hd1,0 (order dependent) for windows not sd.
At the grub menu do ^c and at the grub> prompt and try root (hd1,0) and root (hd2,0) it will tell you what file type you have may help. Here is an example of my grub for xp:

title		Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root		(hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

Hope this helps

[b82b14b7]

Originally Posted by silvagroup

b82b14b7,
What do people call you b, b8, bbb, bad joke I know.

Originally Posted by silvagroup

Anyway, Not being an expert either but having had to mess with grub a few times I would say your grub should be looking at either hd2,0 or hd1,0 (order dependent) for windows not sd.
At the grub menu do ^c and at the grub> prompt and try root (hd1,0) and root (hd2,0) it will tell you what file type you have may help. Here is an example of my grub for xp:

title		Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root		(hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

Hope this helps

I've tried those with no luck, I would have thought it would be sd0 because the drive I'm trying to boot Windows from is an SATA drive. :S

[13sio]

/boot/grub/device.map describes how GRUB treats devices. For the following example, GRUB treats /dev/sda as hd2.

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb
(hd2) /dev/sda

You can take a look on this file.

Another, Windows always wants to be the first drive. If it doesn't, we should use GRUB command 'map' to swap.

Actually, i have no experience about Linux and SATA HDD. The above are what i see on web. Hope it becomes your starting point.