booting windows from grub2 without chainloading

[hatebreed]

I'm wondering if it is possible to boot windows without the chainload option. I don't have xp on the first partition and I don't want to load xp bootloader on the first partition because it will overwrite grub2. All I want to do is boot xp directly from grub, is this not possible? Can't I just load the kernel like I do with linux? I've never had luck with getting grub2 to load xp, I need help. P.S. grub version is 1.97 from ubuntu 9.1 install

[jayd512]

Unless I'm mistaken (wouldn't be the first time)
GRUB won't directly load Windows. GRUB has to hand off the load process to the Windows load sequence (NTLDR).

Is GRUB detecting XP?
And are you able to actually boot up to Windows?

[hatebreed]

no to both. grub overrote the mbr so now it won't detect that windows is even there.

[jayd512]

Post the output of

fdisk -l

Have you tried to generate a new grub.cfg file?

sudo update-grub

*EDIT*

Also, go ahead and post your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file.

[hatebreed]

grub.cfg doesn't have windows listed, I had to manually add it but it's not working because the only way that i've seen to to put the chainloader option in it. I put in these lines but that doesn't work obviously because there isn't a boot loader for that drive.

menuentry "windows xp pro (on /dev/sdb5)" {
root=(hd1,5)
chainloader +1
}

this is fdisk -l output for the drive
/dev/sdb5 1276 2433 9301603+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

and yes i've done update-grub multiple times and it never sees windows at all.

[Lostfarmer]

Your XP menu is incorrect. Put set root=(hd1,5) . If it is not the boot hdd , you will also need to add drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}.

menuentry "Win XP  (on /dev/hdb5)" {
	insmod ntfs
	set root=(hd1,5)
        drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
        chainloader +1
}

That is the way mine is any way , with XP on the non booting hdd, formated as NTFS.

Do you have more then 1 hdd ? If so what is on it ? Which is the boot hdd ?
How did XP get on to sdb5 , a logical volume ? You likely can get it to boot but you will NOT be able to do a repair install if needed.

Can you post the complete output of 'fdisk -l' ?

obviously because there isn't a boot loader for that drive

No it is not obvious , if you with to explain.

[PCNetSpec]

We really need the full output of fdisk -l

Remember that grub counts drives and partitions starting with 0 (not 1)...
so
root=(hd1,5)
means hard drive 2, partition 6

for the fifth partition of drive two, it should read
root=(hd1,4)

But ONLY if you have sdb1, sdb2, sdb3, sdb4 and sbd5

So send the complete output of fdisk -l

[Lostfarmer]

Remember that grub counts drives and partitions starting with 0 (not 1)

That is correct for grub legacy but for grub 2, partitions start with 1. An additional confusion factor.

[PCNetSpec]

Heh... you're right, grub2 drives me up the wall

Seems drives now start at 0 but partitions start at 1... how weird is that.

Still could do with fdisk -l output though.

[hatebreed]

there is no nt boot loader because grub is now the boot loader. so that is the question, if you can boot xp without the nt boot loader on the drive? your grub file is consistant with an nt boot loader installed. when you put the chainloader option in grub that means that it is going to chainload into the nt boot loader. this is not the case for me because I don't have the nt boot loader installed anymore. When I installed ubuntu it installed the grub boot loader on the mbr, so again chainloading will not work in my case.