GRUB error with 2 hard disks

[rssb]

I have 2 hard disks in T42p ( Primary and Ultrabay). I installed Suse 10.1 on the second hard drive. The grub boot loader is set to MBR of the second hard drive (hdc).

I have made a linux.bin from first 1024 bytes of that drive and trying to use the windows xp loader with an entry in boot.ini

This worked earlier a long time back may be a year ago when I had an older bios. With the latest bios there seems to something wrong. When I installed it from the Suse DVD, it marked the drive as hd1, but when i use F12 to select the boot hard disk the bios thinks it is hd0.

Does anyone have a similar setup and are able to boot successfully from windows boot loader.

Thanks

[techflavor]

Take a look at Hack the Windows NT/200/XP Boot Loader and go toward the bottom to the 'Booting Linux' section.

[rssb]

yeah this works if both on the same hard drive. But the problem here is linux is on the second hard drive.

THe copying of GRUB MBR to primary windows disk and then restoring using win xp rescue mode seems to be the way, but I am afraid it might mess up my windows..

[smugiri]

When you booted the SuSE DVD to install, it was the boot device making it hd0 while the HDD became hd1.

You probably have the hardware set up to boot the CD/RW before the HDD right now.After removing the CD/RW hardware (or rebooting from the HDD), the HDD becomes hd0 and the HDD in the ultrabay becomes hd1.

Try changing the default boot order in the BIOS so that the ultrabay device is ALWAYS booted after the regular HDD (rather than selecting the boot device using F12 at boot). You have to do this with the HDD in the ultrabay rather than the CD/RW as the BIOS is able to detect the difference between the devices. This will mark the ultrabay device as hd1 and might fix the problem.

[rssb]

Thanks Steve, I will try this out and keep you posted.

[bessel]

I had the same problem (T60). I eventually solved it by hex-edited the first sector of my second harddrive (where grub resides). I do not remember the details now, but you have to change a 0x80 (means the first hard drive, because I made linux bootable from ultrabay) byte to 0x81 (the second harddrive, this is how bootloader recognizes the linux drive if you boot from main drive).

yeah this works if both on the same hard drive. But the problem here is linux is on the second hard drive.

THe copying of GRUB MBR to primary windows disk and then restoring using win xp rescue mode seems to be the way, but I am afraid it might mess up my windows..