I realize this this pushing the limits for a KM forum, even in the General Linux forum, but I'm hoping someone here is a boot loader expert. -- cuz I sure ain't...

I have a Dell Laptop that came with MCE, I have a bunch of apps that I use there, so it can't go, I've loaded ubuntu on it 'cuz I really like Linux. Now, I have some work related-stuff that I want to keep segregated from my home stuff, so I want to add XP Pro to the mix. I have it all repartitioned, and I've grown fairly proficient using gparted, here's the basic Idea:

sda1 (hd0,0): Linux swap
sda2 (hd0,1): Win XP MCE (C:)
sda3 (hd0,2): Ubuntu's (/)
sda4 : extended partition
sda5 (hd0,4): Ubuntu's (/home)
sda6 (hd0,5): Win XP Pro (D:)

So here's the deal, I installed XP Pro, and it happily installed XP's boot loader which let me multiboot the 2 XP's (thank you Bill Gates)

I went back into ubuntu's live CD and did
%> grub
grub> root (hd0,2)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

rebooted into ubuntu, and added XP pro to the menu.lst (by copying the XP MCE section and changing root to (hd0,5)

Now on boot I get the GRUB menu which looks fine, but if I select XP pro I get "Invalid device" If I select XP MCE I get the NT boot loader which lets me choose MCE or Pro.

What I'd like to do is get the GRUB menu working so I can select any of the 3 OS's, instead of this multi loader configuration. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Joe

Hi,

You may have to manually edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and check that the xp is pointed to the correct partition. I don't have my multi-boot laptop with me so can only give you a general pointer for now.

example: from my KM / Ubuntu box - notice that hd0,2 relates to /dev/hda3
It is one of those do you count from zero or one. Check your xp setting and you may have to add a count of 1

root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-chw-13 root=/dev/sda3

Mike

I've done a little digging; I'm thinking this is more of an XP question than a Linux question.

I think the problem is that when I installed XP Pro the installer "knew" about the MCE install. So when I'm running Pro, I'm running of the D: Drive, and I can see the full MCE partition as C: XP Pro installed its Boot loader on C, replacing the MCE loader, and configured it to multiboot the 2 XP installs. I think GRUB can't boot Pro directly because there is no boot loader on that partition: (hd0,5) as GRUB sees it.

Put another way, there's a C:\boot.ini, but no D:\boot.ini

I'm thinking I have to copy the boot loader from C: to D: then configure each boot loader to just boot its partition, then GRUB will be happy to chain to each partition's loader. The question now is how?