Hi Mark, On Fri, 2004-07-30 at 16:21, Mark Grimshaw wrote:
I have Tom's rtboot and a GRUB floppy both of which run. From these, including the RH9/boot CD/linux rescue option, I've tried grub-install options and grub commandline (root (hd1,0); setup (hd1)) options - each time I get an installed successfully message but each boot, up comes Windows.
I believe this is your problem you are installing a boot record to the wrong hard drive. From what I understand of your setup you need to install grub/lilo onto hda (or hd0 in grub terms). Explanation below.
I have two HDs: W2K (inc. linux swap) on hda LINUX: /dev/hdb3 / /dev/hdb1 /boot
I know most HOWTOs state that the linux boot should be on the same hard drive as the windows OS but these are the partitions I've been successfully dual-booting from with GRUB for the past 2 years.
I have no more hair left to tear out - please help.
On boot your bios will look for a boot sector in the MBR of hda and then possibly (if it's newish) will move on to look for boot sectors in the partitions of that drive etc. It will use the first boot sector it finds. Windows will have installed a boot sector in the MBR of hda, so your computer boots, bios finds the boot sector in the MBR of hda and boots windows. To fix this you need to install lilo/grub (with an option to boot windows) onto the MBR of the first hard disk. Installing it onto the second hard disk (as you indicated you were doing) will have no effect for the reason explained above. Hope this helps. Regards -- Matt Brown Email: matt(a)mattb.net.nz GSM: +64 21 611 544