Booting XP with GRUB not possible / Partition not found

[lvleph]

The boot loader for XP is at (hd0,0) even though XP is on sda5 (Or it should be). Try changing

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title      Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify   (hd0,6)
chainloader   (hd0,6)+1
makeactive
boot

to

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title		Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify	(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

Make sure you make a backup before hand.

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sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.bak

[lvleph]

You could try the following.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=704857

EDIT: In your case

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sudo grub

> root (hd0,1)
> setup (hd0)
> quit

[Lolo Uila]

Your HDD partitioning is odd. What you specified makes no sense.

Unused Unused Partition *
/dev/sda1 (extended, lba)
/dev/sda5 Windows (ntfs)
/dev/sda6 Linux swap
/dev/sda2 Linux (ext4) **

* what is this? Why is there no primary partition here?
** Umm... if sda1 is an extended partition, then you should not have an sda2 (1-4 are primary, 5+ extended)


Grub counts drives & partitions from 0 (Zero), so your 1st partition is (0,0), 2nd is (0,1), etc. So sda5 should be (0,4).

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title      Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify   (hd0,4)
chainloader   +1
makeactive
boot

[lvleph]

hd0,0 was incorrect. I apologize for that. It appears that you should be using hd0,4 for Windows.

[optimize me]

download and burn the super grub disk and see if you can load it that way.

[Pierre]

within Mint, are you able to "mount" the xp partition., that is shown in 'Computer' ( dble click on it )
&/or read any of the data within that partition?.
if so, what partition does Mint say, that it is ..

[RichardH]

This seems correct and should boot windows. If not, add "boot" command at the bottom.
Sometimes it seems to be needed, others not.

title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1
savedefault

[RichardH]

Just looked at the windows part on the AA1 and it looks like this,
and I know that it boots: (doesn't always mean that it will work on yours.

title Microsoft Windows XP Home (on /dev/sda2)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
savedefault
chainloader +1

If you really must get windows running & if you have a windows CD:
make a backup of your menu.lst
boot the windows CD and repair the boot partition or whatever its called.
or from DOS fdisk /mbr but the winCD is probably the best.

This will get windows booting, but then you will have to reinstall grub again,
which in the wiki is reported to not be working correctly.
You could always reinstall LM7 again, but that is a pain.

See here:
http://linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php/How ... _your_grub
and
http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopi ... 42&t=19208
for repairing grub in mint.

[Lolo Uila]

I think the problems might have to do with the HP bootloader. It offers you to boot either the windows installed or the rescue partition, which I removed for Linux...

Uh oh! You are trying to chain two different boot menu type loaders? That's gotta be the problem.

You are not simply chainloading the Windows boot process, you are trying to link one boot menu (Grub) to another (HP) and we really don't know what the HP menu requires.

I'll bet part of the HP boot loader got over-written by Grub and the HP one is broken now. Unless someone here knows enough about the HP boot loader to offer you a fix (which will likely break Grub), I'd say you are probably going to have to back up your data, wipe your drive and start from scratch (install both XP and Mint all over again).

The only way around it I can see would be to completely remove the HP boot menu and replace it with the normal XP boot loader, and I have no idea how to do that. Hopefully someone else is more familiar with the HP software.

[StanTheMan]

Win XP should be on a Primary partition made bootable (active)
I would suggest , using a partitioner such as GPartEd , delete sda5 to make empty space , then create a new Primary sda2 and make it bootable . Using XP s install disk which should re-write the MBR , install WinXP on sda2 .
Next you would have to edit GRUB to get your linux bootloader working again.

[lvleph]

Win XP should be on a Primary partition made bootable (active)
I would suggest , using a partitioner such as GPartEd , delete sda5 to make empty space , then create a new Primary sda2 and make it bootable . Using XP s install disk which should re-write the MBR , install WinXP on sda2 .
Next you would have to edit GRUB to get your linux bootloader working again.

Would the reinstall of XP and the subsequent rewrite of the MBR require one to need to setup grub again, not just a menu.lst fix?

[lvleph]

It might be possible to copy the partition and then use the CD to fix the MBR.