[ltp] Installed Grub to MBR, now can't boot XP (dual boot config)

[Greg Kimberly]

Interesting. Thanks for that reply, Simon. 

It turns out that the error 17 was from the partition type being miss
set - probably by me mucking about with the parttype command. 

Unfortunately, that just gets me back to where I was - able to boot
Ubuntu, the R&R facility and not XP.  

On Wed, 2007-01-17 at 10:14 +0000, Simon Williams wrote:
> Greg Kimberly wrote:
> > I have a T41 upon which I've installed Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy). I'm now in
> > the seemly unusual situation of being able to boot linux and the
> > recovery tools, but not XP. My drive layout is:
> > 
> > hda1 XP
> > hda2 swap
> > hda3 ext3 (root of ubuntu)
> > hda4 (extended partition)
> > 	hda5 rescue and recovery
...
> 
> > As for the original error (can't boot XP only rescue) I take it that
> > when I installed Ubuntu, it squashed the windows boot loader and thus
> > there isn't a normal XP bootloader? 
> 
> Well, yes and no. Windows is semi-helpful in the sense that while their 
> bootloaders are completely rubbish, they are required for loading 
> windows and store them in the partition (/dev/hda1) rather than the MBR 
> (/dev/hda). There is a very simple bootloader installed in the MBR which 
> essentially does that same as grub- it chainloads the bootloader on 
> /dev/hda1. That is the one you will have wiped and so it doesn't matter.
> 

That makes sense. But then why won't XP boot? I can mount the XP NTFS
partition from Ubuntu - it looks fine there. I can definitely get all
the way into the R&Recovery system and log on. But I've tried grub with:

root            (hd0,0)
chainloader     +1

and

root            (hd0,0)
rootnoverify    (hd0,0)
chainloader     +1

and

rootnoverify    (hd0,0)
chainloader     +1

and even (in an attempt to really get it to not pay attention to R&R)

root            (hd0,0)
hide		(hd0,1)
hide		(hd0,2)
hide		(hd0,3)
chainloader     +1

which then boots (you guessed it R&R). (Stopping R&R while it warms up
produces the unbootable machine again. So perhaps that is how the
partition types get screwed up.)

So I can now boot Ubuntu again, but still no XP.

Any more ideas anyone?

Thanks,

Greg