[emeri1md]

Hello, all.

I'm back from a long hiatus from Linux and am trying to set up a new dual boot system with Heron and XP Pro. I had some trouble with the XP CD, so I installed Heron first. Now I'm trying to boot to the XP CD to try again, but it won't. I went back into BIOS, but now there's no option to set the boot sequence.

Has anyone else seen anything like this? I have done nothing to the BIOS at all. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[Tutku]

i think you've missed something, under BIOS menu there must be "Peripheral Devices" tab, under that tab you can change your boot order.

[emeri1md]

There's 'Integrated Peripherals', but no 'Peripheral Devices' tab. I've been through all of them. The boot sequence used to be there before I installed Heron.

[ozar]

Some BIOS options only appear when certain other selections have been made. I'm not sure this is what is happening in your case, but you might have to play around with the options to get certain options to show. You could try resetting the BIOS to the default settings to see if that helps.

Also, some machines won't allow a machine to boot the XP installation disk once GRUB has written to the MBR, so you might need to clear the MBR before your XP install CD will boot. Again, not sure this is the problem in your case.

[emeri1md]

If it helps, I have one SATA drive and an IDE CDR. This is my first time using SATA. Would that have any affect?

[ozar]

Yes, WinXP does not include SATA drivers so you'll need to create the drivers floppy from your motherboard CD. There should be instructions on there for doing that. Otherwise, you might be able to set your SATA drive to run from the PATA mode in your BIOS.

If your machine won't allow booting with GRUB written to the MBR, you can clear the MBR by going into Linux, opening a terminal, switching to root, then issuing the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

You'll get a short message about records in and records out, then your XP disk should boot. You'll have to reinstall GRUB once you are done with your Windows install. An easy method of doing that by using the SuperGRUB LiveCD.

Edit: oops, Ubuntu uses sudo, so the command would be:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

[emeri1md]

Your second idea worked. With sudo, of course. I was able to reinstall Heron and undo some config mistake I made. To be honest, I'd love to leave Windoze behind and just Linux with Wine for certain apps. But that's for another thread.

Thanks for your time and help.

[ozar]

Glad that worked for you, and hope you have lots of fun using Linux.

[vanpersie]

Originally Posted by ozar

Also, some machines won't allow a machine to boot the XP installation disk once GRUB has written to the MBR, so you might need to clear the MBR before your XP install CD will boot. Again, not sure this is the problem in your case.

How to clear the MBR give me a link please.
this may solve my problem herehttp://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ins...-packages.html