Dual Boot Nightmare - Now XP won't boot either!

[Bob Hentges]

On 14/09/05, Richard Querin <rfquerin at gmail.com> wrote:

<snipped>

> IDE1 slave (hdb) - 160GB 
>    #1 primary  100 GB  ntfs   hdb1
>    #5 logical   57 GB  ext2   hdb5 (ubuntu installed here)
>    #6 logical  2.2 GB  swap   swap
>    
> SCSI1 (0,0,0) (sda) - 160GB
>    #1 primary 75.5 GB  ntfs   sda1 (where XP is installed - marked as
> bootable) 
>    #5 logical 84.5 GB  ntfs   sda5

If this is a "df" output from the moment, you need not to worry.
Everything seems to be fine, and should by there work.

Now, I have never used grub with SATA discs, but I assume that it
works just the same way as with IDE discs. Which means, that you got
to know your "primary" drive. I am not necessarily talking of
master/slave, but the first disc who is to be polled when booting for
the MBR.

I suppose that the SATA disc is the one we are searching for, as it
runs Windows. So, I would, if I were you, boot into Ubuntu which (as
far as I have understood) still works and edit /etc/grub/menu.lst to
contain these lines:

***
title           Microsoft Windows XP
root            (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1
***

I have these lines at the very end of the config file. Do leave the
lines reading "something" Ubuntu "something" untouched.

This can resolve the issue, but I am not sure, as I haven't clearly
been able to understand whether or not you are confronted with a
"graphical" menu at boot time. If this should not work, than write
another mail, and somebody will probably guide you through the
creation of your own grub config. Which should work fine on your
machine. In the meantime, I will look up the part on the SATA drives.

> Sorry for the long-winded explanation. ANY help to get XP booting again
> would be appreciated. I need these data and apps!

Oh, I like to have a lot of explications instead of the other way
around, where you got to ask like several times to see the situation
as a whole. :)