Win XP and Linux boot problem

[Lesliect]

Hi everyone,

I would really appreciate any help on this one, it isn't easy to solve.

The situation : I have a single hard disk which I partitioned into 3 drives : 1 for Ubuntu, 1 for the swap, and 1 for WinXP. I have installed Ubuntu on te first one. I have WinXP mounted on the hda6 partition. Now, I'd like to choose the OS on boot. This is the tricky part : i have installed GAG, which detects the WinXP partition, but after choosing it, I have a black screen and nothing happens. Ubuntu works fine, even detects the Windows partition. I also trtied using grub, without success. I tried every single possible combination of :

root (hd0,5)
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
map
makeactive
chainloader +1

but when grub boots and I choose WinXP, it gives me error messages like : "srting cannot be read" or "invalid drive requested", or "error while parsing number", and does nothing. I have verified and reverified that the NTFS partition is mounted on hda6, in other words, (hd0,5). Where is the problem?

I have tried everything, been working on this for 2 days now and this is beginning to get frustrating.

So please, ANYONE who can help, please do so, I would REALLY appreciate it.

Thank you everyone very much,

Leslie

[TopFarmer]

As far as I know for Microsoft OS's to install ,any of them ,they needs a primary partition that the OS can read. Unless Ubuntu is installed on a FAT32 partition , how did you install XP ? That answer might be the clue of problem, give detail.

I also could never get GAG to boot an extended partition, so switched to XOSL--www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm . The OS is win98 but should work with XP.

Do not know if GRUB or LILO will or not.

[Lesliect]

Thank you for the reply.

I first partitioned my hard disk into 3 partitions. Then, I installed WinXP on one of them, on an NTFS partition. Then I installed Ubuntu on an ext3 partition, and the third one is the swap partition.

And thank you for the XOSL, I will try it!!

Leslie

[onespeedreed]

Topfarmer is absolutely right.
Windows should be installed first. On the first PRIMARY partition. You can then go ahead and install linux on any type of partition succeeding the windows partition. This just makes life simpler.
If you intend to dual boot linux with windows, Ubuntu, or any flavour of linux should give you the choice of installing grub or lilo to the MBR or the ROOT(linux) partition. Always choose MBR and your windows installation will be added to the linux boot loader menu.
If you intend to multiboot, then the linux boot loader should be installed to ROOT (/). This is when GAG would come into play. Install GAG to mbr and add your windows partition and linux partitions to GAG. I have had no problem booting 9 operating systems on a variety of partitions but windows has always resided on the first primary partition.