On Sat, 2011-01-08 at 00:36 -0500, William Case wrote: > Hi; > I don't seem to be able to chainload to WindowsXP anymore. > > My grub.conf in /boot/grub/ includes: > ... > title WindowsXP SP3 > rootnoverify (hd0,0) > chainloader +1 > > Finally, as a test to see if WindowsXP will boot on its own, without the > use of grub, using my WindowsXP Recovery Console, tried to restore the > MBR. WindowsXP would no longer boot. > > Two outstanding other pieces of information. I thought sda (hd0) was > failing and removed the cables to save it. Reattaching the cables > seemed to fix everything. I can mount sda and see all my partitions and > data on both disks. No more spin up problems are being recorded by > 'Smart'. > > I re-installed Fedora 14 but his should not have mucked up the windows > (sda) installation order as can some times happen. > > I have 'yum remove grub' and then reinstalled. Same thing. > > That's it. It feels like I have two grubs but I can't find a second > one. > > > Any suggestions on what I should try next? > BIOS changed the disk boot order automatically on me when I disconnected /dev/sda temporarily. The change did not show on the BIOS boot order menu. I had to dig three levels down in Advanced Features of my BIOS to find the change. Grub still doesn't recognize the chainload command. It may well be my old Maxtor with my WindowsXP system (/dev/sda) has died. I would just get a new harddisk except I don't want to go through the exercise of reinstalling WindowsXP and updating everything. My problem now is that the data and files on XP are all visible when I mount the disk. I have no trouble mounting and browsing around in /dev/sda. I am going to do the following as a last ditch effort: 1) Physically disconnect /dev/sdb and see if I can get WindowsXP to boot on its own. If I can't I can be pretty sure I have an old dead disk problem. 2) Try to rescue everything on /dev/sda with dd or a backup program and reinstall Windows. Yes I backed up but I am so seldom in WindowsXP that the backup is way out of date. If you have any other suggestions, I would be glad to hear them and try them. This Windows disk is not critical and can wait repairing or replacing. I hardly ever boot into WindowsXP anymore. -- Regards Bill Fedora 14, Gnome 2.32 Evo.2.32, Emacs 23.2.1