know of another dual boot program rather than grub

[Goh Lip]

Ray,
let's get 2 points here.

o  Error 17 in grub usually means your grub does not see the 
partition or drive your entry is pointing to.(it could also be a 
mapping error).

o  If you can get a grub error message, it means your grub is 
working, and I guess through your "Drive d" Kubuntu.

3 guesses. (if wrong, pls alert)

o drives c (XP), d (Kubuntu), e (bkup XP) are on 1 hard drive.
o drive L (bkup Kubuntu) is on the 'rackable' external separate drive.
o you can access XP (drive c), Kubuntu (drive d) and bkupXP (drive 
e) using the grub menu. It's just you cannot access your bkup Kubuntu (drive L).

Now do the following 5 things. (pls read all of this first before you proceed)

First, go into Kubuntu (drive d).
{If you cannot, use the Kubuntu live CD.}

Second, bring up a terminal.
type "fdisk -lu" 
You should see
sda1
sda2
sda3
sdb1 (or something like that)

Copy the print-up, you may need to post it.

Now if you don't see sdb1 (or something like that), Horrors, your bios could not detect your 'rackable' hard drive. Stop here, get a hard drive your bios can detect.

Third, open up the menu.lst file in the drive d (Kubuntu)[/boot/grub/menu.lst]

Copy the print-up, you may need to post it.
Verify there is an entry pointing to the drive L
{most likely root (hd1,0)}.

If not there , manually add an entry
root (hd1,0)
map  (hd0) (hd1)
map  (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

save and exit.

Fourth, go back to the terminal
type "sudo grub"
at >grub type "root (hd0,1)  {if your Kubuntu drive d is at sda2}
at >grub type "setup (hd0)
at >grub type "quit"

Fifth, go to the drive L (bkup Kubuntu), make sure there is a boot and grub sector. ( I am beginning to wonder how you make your backup. It may be that you did not include the grub installation in the drive L or the grub sector in drive L was copied directly from drive d).
Open up the menu.lst file in the drive L (bkup Kubuntu)[/boot/grub/menu.lst]
Verify the the first default entry is directed to itself and not to drive d.
If the entry is
root (hd0,1)

change to 
root (hd1,0)  {if the drive L is at sdb1}
save and exit.

End of Instructions.

Comment. Your rackable disk is labelled at "L". This means you may have in the past, various hard drives installed which you do not use anymore, even taking into account cdroms and usb drives. This may muck up the naming convention that grub uses.

Ray, if you still have a problem, post the printouts for fdisk -lu and menu.lst at drive d and menu.lst at drive L. It is long, you may omit the commented parts or send to me directly for the convenience of other Kubuntu-list users.

Personal opinion- who needs a back up for Linux? Just back up your data. Have a separate home partition, perfect. New versions, new distro, use the same home partition. Windows? It's a mess reinstalling all those applications. Still, back up the whole OS? Planning a missile launch? Use RAID. Better still, use Linux. Best? Make peace.



















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