Help with grub problem...

[Ben Edwards]

I notice you have not had a reply to this.  I am afraid I can not help
but did see someone on the IRC channel getting help sorting what
seemed like a smiler problem.  I think there are issues with the way
grub and windows addresses the disk.  I would really like to get
something up on the wiki as it is a realy problem show stopper.  If
you do get help on IRC could you send me a copy of the IRC log.  If
you dont let me know and I will se if I can help some other way.

Ben

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 17:20:16 -0500, TLT <turk at gulftel.com> wrote:
> Hello ubuntu-users,
> 
> I read an article about Ubuntu Linux last week, and visited the
> website to find out more. After reading a bit I downloaded the
> warty-rc-install-amd64.iso an burned the CD.
> 
> I proceeded to install Ubuntu and all seemed to go well, however after
> the install I discovered that grub had missed picking up that I have
> WindowsXP Pro installed on my machine. As a result I could not boot
> into Windows. The only options in the grub menu are the four Ubuntu
> boot options! Luckily I had a floppy laying around with the bootloader
> knows as GAG on it which I had previously played around with and it
> was already setup to allow me to boot into XP.
> 
> The two hard drives are a Western Digital and a Maxtor. Both are
> 160Gigs. The WD has C: D: and F: partitions with WindowsXP located on
> the C: partition. The Maxtor has G: H: I: J: and K: partitions.
> 
> I chose the manual option to format partition J: on the Maxtor to
> install Ubuntu. The Ubuntu install seemed to be doing fine and after
> the install I booted into Ubuntu. After playing around with it for a
> good while, I rebooted the computer only to boot back into Ubuntu! I
> rebooted again and brought up the grub menu only to find that
> WindowsXP does not exist there? Apparently the Ubuntu installation
> sees the WD hard drive as hdc and the Maxtor as hdd and/or hd0 and
> hd1.
> 
> I have been using computers for many years. I have tinkered with and
> become very familiar with many OS's in the past including the AmigaOS,
> WinBlows of various flavors, QNX, MacOS, etc. As a result I'm fairly
> competent at many things, however I have never used grub before. I had
> installed Mandrake in the past but I chose to use Lilo as the
> bootloader while using it. I'm not really sure how to edit the grub
> menu.lst to get WindowsXP to show up and boot XP by default. I looked
> over the menu.lst over and kind of got an idea as to what to do, but I
> am unable to edit the file. I have tried using sudo during various
> attempts at editing this file, but it is read only and I can't edit
> it. I tried using sudo to set a password for root and it seemed to
> work, but even logged in as root I cannot edit the file or change the
> properties because it says I'm not the owner even though I'm logged in
> as root. :/
> 
> My machine has an Athlon64 3400+, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 1Gig of
> Kingston Ram, an Asus K8V-SE deluxe motherboard, two 160Gig hard
> drives on different controllers, a Sony DRU-530A DVD RW and a floppy
> drive.
> 
> I'm pretty much a Linux noob even though I have tinkered around with
> Mandrake before. Can someone tell me what I need to do to edit the
> grub menu.lst and what I need to add there to get WindowsXP in the
> menu and have it boot as the default OS?
> 
> I got a reply from bugzilla saying that the issue I was having was a
> know bug on the AMD 64 platform, that it had been fixed upstream and
> that it would be fixed as soon as the Ubuntu team merge Debian
> unstable into Hoary. It was also suggested that I post to this mailing
> list for help. I was told that I should be able to edit menu.lst with
> sudo, although if it happens to be read-only then I might have to
> write the file forcibly and was advised for help on force writing the
> file and the correct menu.lst syntax to post here.
> 
> All I have at this time is the basic Ubuntu install and the apps,
> editors, etc. that it installs by default. I do like the looks of it,
> and I think it will have a bright future. :)
> 
> Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. At the moment the
> only way I can boot into XP is to use the GAG bootloader disk. :/
> 
> regards,
> 
> Lee Trice
> 
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> ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
> http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
> 


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Ben Edwards - Poole, UK, England
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