Adding FC5 to an XP computer -

Bob Goodwin bobgoodwin at wildblue.net
Sat Sep 2 17:14:18 UTC 2006


James Wilkinson wrote:
> Bob Goodwin wrote a lot in HTML only. So I hope I'm quoting him more or
> less correctly:
>
>   
>> You solved my problem, or at least pointed me to the solution.
>>
>> Fdisk showed both drives designated as boot, I toggled boot to off
>> for /dev/sda and now grub comes up and offers selection of either 
>> operating system.  I haven't tried selecting Windows XP yet but will
>> report if a problem remains.
>>
>> I can't explain why both were set to boot but that's the way the 
>> installer left them?
>>     
>
> OK, if that happens, the chances are that grub was installed on
> /dev/sdb and not on /dev/sda. The BIOS will work out that there's no
> bootable partition on the WinXP disk, and "fail over" to /dev/sdb.
>
> If it works, you might even want to keep it that way. Be aware that at
> any time, XP updates might re-enable sda.
>
> Incidentally, "bootable" means "this partition is bootable". The BIOS
> will normally choose which disk to try first, and will boot the first
> bootable partition it finds.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> James.
>
>   
Yes, that helps somewhat, explains why toggling boot off
on /dev/sda allowed it to move on to the next one where it
found grub.

Physically swapping the two data connectors might have made
it work it seems since that would have made the "grub drive"
/dev/sda?

BobG




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