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Editing Dual Boot Script

Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:10 am
by Guest
I have a dual boot machine XP and Ubuntu.
I just installed Mint over Ubuntu, but now when I boot, I dont see an option to boot to XP (which I need for work). Where do I go to fix that (how do I do it), to create an entry to pick XP in the boot script?

Re: Editing Dual Boot Script

Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:21 am
by hwebb1@cogeco.ca
Assuming that you haven't installed Mint over XP, when you go to boot/grub/menu.lst you should see something like this near the bottom of the file.


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda4
title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd0,3)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


If it's not there you can always COPY and PASTE from here.

exXP (and not going back

Re: Editing Dual Boot Script

Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:52 am
by Guest
Thanks for the reply.

A couple of questions:
Here are my other entries:

Code: Select all

title		Linux Mint, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic
root		(hd0,2)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/sda3 ro quiet splash
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title		Linux Mint, kernel 2.6.24-16-generic (recovery mode)
root		(hd0,2)
kernel	/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-16-generic root=/dev/sda3 ro single
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-generic

title		Linux Mint, kernel memtest86+
root		(hd0,2)
kernel	/boot/memtest86+.bin
1. So, should I not make this root entry (hd,2) as well
2. What is the savedefault, makeactive, chainloader +1 stuff all about.
3. My XP is mounted on /dev/sda1 so how do I get that in there...

Re: Editing Dual Boot Script

Posted: Fri May 23, 2008 2:18 pm
by 67GTA
Post the output of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l
from a terminal.

Re: Editing Dual Boot Script

Posted: Sat May 24, 2008 10:19 am
by hwebb1@cogeco.ca
It seems to me that you have installed Mint on top of Mint! Have a look at your hard drive partitions using GParted. If XP is there it will show up as being NTFS format.
If you have the original XP CD, you may end up re-installing XP. Then you can re-install Mint taking care to pick the appropriate partitioning procedure. I forget the actual words but I think there is an automatic process for using the rest of the hard drive not used by XP or you can do it manually which requires you to decide where you want the partitions to be. There some very good posts in this Forum on Dual-booting :roll:
Good Luck exXP (and not going back)