Dual Boot Windows XP and Fedora 4 Core, 2 SATA and 2 IDE HD configuration

[club128]

I am a novice Linux user and usually find fixes on forums. In this case I have hit a brick wall and beg of the experts' help.

I have 4 hard drives in my system, 2 SATA 160 GB and 2 IDE (250 GB and 80 GB). I installed Windows XP first (several years ago) on the primary SATA drive. I have now installed (dual boot) Fedora Core 4 on the secondary SATA drive. Upon rebooting I expected to see the GRUB bootloader which was installed during the installation of Fedora. Instead it booted directly in Windows. I realized I had to change the boot priority in the BIOS to the 80 GB IDE (more on this later). GRUB now pops up and I am able to boot into Fedora no problem. However, when I try to boot into Windows I get the hal.dll error (indicative of the bootloader pointing to the wrong drive/partition). I boot back into Fedora and look at my /etc/grub.conf file...here 'tis:default=1
timeout=8
splashimage=(hd3,3)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core 4
root (hd3,3)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp.img
title Windows XP Home
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Fedora recognizes my HD structure (via fdisk -l) as follows:Disk /dev/hda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 382 3068383+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 383 9729 75079777+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 383 9729 75079746 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 30401 244196001 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS (Windows)
/dev/sda2 3825 20023 130118467+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 3825 8647 38740716 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 8648 20023 91377688+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1404 6885 44034165 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 6886 20023 105530985 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb3 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 14 1403 11165175 83 Linux (Fedora)
/dev/sdb5 6886 20023 105530953+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
I know it's a mess. The odd part is that I have to set the boot priority in the BIOS to the 80 GB IDE HD instead of the 160 GB that Fedora is installed on (if I set priority to the Fedora installed HD, GRUB does not appear). It seems that GRUB is pointing to the correct HD for Fedora, not sure why it's not booting Windows. Here's what I've tried (in grub.conf file):
Change the 'rootnoverify hd(0,0)' under Windows to 'rootnoverify hd(2,0)'. No dice, I get an error message.
Add under Windows 'map hd(0) hd(1) map hd(1) hd(0)' and 'makeactive'. Again no dice, same error message as #1.
My guess is the fix here has to do with this 'map' business but I can't seem to find a detailed reference of what it's doing and hence can't modify it to meet my needs. Any suggestions?

TIA :wave:,
club128

[kage]

Hm, I'm thinking the problem is not the parameters you're using, but the hard drive you're pointing it to. Try changing the windows string from rootnoverify (hd0,0) to rootnoverify (hd2,0) like so:

title Windows XP Home
rootnoverify (hd2,0)
chainloader +1

If that doesn't work, try (hd2,0) and (hd3,0) as well. Let me know how that goes, and we'll go from there. If worse comes to worse you can still login to windows by changing the boot order in your bios, correct?

[club128]

Thanks for responding Kage,

Seems no luck here...here's the outcome:

Changed to 'rootnoverify (hd1,0), response 'NTLDR is missing'
Changed to 'rootnoverify (hd2,0), response 'NTLDR is missing'
Changed to 'rootnoverify (hd3,0), no response...seems to hang.
I did notice a line in the grub.conf file...goes like this:# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd3,3)
Could this be causing issue? When I was installing Fedora, I was unable to use 'automatic partition with Disk Druid' so I did it manually and I remember being informed that I didn't have a /boot partition but it let me continue so I did. What say you???

By the way, I am able to boot into Windows by changing the boot priority hard disk in the BIOS ( I change it to the primary SATA drive which seems to be hd 2 as Fedora sees it).

TIA

[kage]

Well, we're on the right track now, at least. It looks like both of these...

Changed to 'rootnoverify (hd1,0), response 'NTLDR is missing'
Changed to 'rootnoverify (hd2,0), response 'NTLDR is missing'

...will boot windows. However the NTLDR file being missing is what you'll have to work on now. There are some steps here you can try:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;318728&Product=win2000#2

Its not an outdated bios problem, in your case, but one of the ntldr loader files is missing (most likely). Use method 3 from that link to fix it.

Doing that can possibly overwrite your linux bootloader, so make sure you have a linux live cd (knoppix, slax, etc) handy just in case.