[SOLVED] Grub Hangs - won't launch Win XP [now broken install]

[Was_Just19]

Background:
                    A dual boot PC which runs PCLOS on one HDD and Win XP on a second HDD. Both HDDs are SATA.
The Grub bootloader is installed on the PCLOS HDD MBR, and the Win disk MBR has not been interfered with.
So if the PCLOS HDD is withdrawn Win XP will boot correctly.
With the PCLOS HDD in place that is the first to boot and Grub is the boot manager, and offers a choice of PCLOS or XP.

This PC has had an installation of 2007; a reinstall for 2009; and now a reinstall of 2010.1
All have worked perfectly until this latest install.

Changes:
                The only change made, either hardware or software to the PC is that 2010 has been installed, and the partitions have been changed to ext4.

Results:
              PCLOS boots perfectly. No problems whatsoever.
XP fails to boot .......  the boot stanza is displayed on the screen and it just hangs.

Tests:
           Checked that the boot stanza is correct. Even made changes which I was convinced were wrong to see if it made any difference. The only difference is I got errors consistent with the changes.

Using what appears to be the correct boot stanza, if I change from rootnoverify to root I can see that the partition is correctly recognised. There are only two partitions on the XP HDD, and XP is on 0x07 .....  the other is 0x12 -- a restore partition.
I am attempting to boot the correct partition.

I thought the change to ext4 might have had an effect, but putting Grub on an ext3 partition and using that to control the booting made no difference. It still hangs.

Thoughts:
                   All of this seems to be pointing to a problem with the present version of Grub. There is no update for Grub from what is present in the 2010.1 ISO used.

So where next?

Only option I can think of is maybe get a copy of a previous version of Grub and use that.

Maybe there is something in the BIOS that affects this .....  with all the meddling I chose BIOS defaults to see if it would make any difference ......  but it was failing long before I did that.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: SOLVED

Motherboard was faulty!

[wwwauthor]

thoughts..

what about loading ntfs.mod or ntfscomp.mod,
i am unsure if ntfs is preloaded in v2

also could your ntldr be missing or currupt?

[Was_Just19]

thoughts..

what about loading ntfs.mod or ntfscomp.mod,
i am unsure if ntfs is preloaded in v2

I have no idea what you mean by this ...  could you explain please?
v2  of what?

also could your ntldr be missing or currupt?

No .....  otherwise XP could not boot.

Thanks for the response.

[Old-Polack]

JohnBoy:

How about a fdisk -l result, and a peek at the windows stanza from menu.lst?

[Was_Just19]

Code: [Select]

Disk /dev/sdb: 320.1 GB, 320071851520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x2dc02dbf

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *         660       38913   307275255    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2               1         659     5293386   12  Compaq diagnostics

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Code: [Select]

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title PCLinuxOS 2010.1
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=PCLinuxOS_2010.1 root=UUID=a7d64339-e7bb-4ccc-b0c5-1bc84380c7ec  acpi=on resume=UUID=5c407013-027f-466c-92c9-ce7e2abc65e1 vga=791
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title linux_nonfb
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux_nonfb root=UUID=a7d64339-e7bb-4ccc-b0c5-1bc84380c7ec  acpi=on resume=UUID=5c407013-027f-466c-92c9-ce7e2abc65e1
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=a7d64339-e7bb-4ccc-b0c5-1bc84380c7ec  failsafe acpi=on
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1
This is the default menu.lst

Thanks for taking a look,

regards.

EDIT:
             This is displaying the menu.lst stanza in full on the screen and then hangs.

I have never seen that happen previously .......  or at least do not recall having seen it previously.

[tj_fredo]

i guess the partitions+2nd hard drive were renumbered when you made the reinstall,the catch is to know wich number were given to the xp drive.

also the compaq diag partition must be taken into account...
 

i only see references to (hd0,1)

but what about the second hd  ===hd1,*===perhaps?

just a guess.

 

[djohnston]

Windows portion should be:

title windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1

[Was_Just19]

Windows portion should be:

title windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It makes no difference .....  if Grub doesn't recognise it, it reports back .....  as it would if I changed to (hd1,1) ......  with rootnoverify there is no report back ......

[Old-Polack]

Windows portion should be:

title windows
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1

It makes no difference .....  if Grub doesn't recognise it, it reports back .....  as it would if I changed to (hd1,1) ......  with rootnoverify there is no report back ......

It really should make no difference, but on one build of an older machine this worked when the (0x81) type designation did not, in the map lines.

title Windows 2
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

Copy paste it as is, into your menu.lst under the present one and give it a try. May do nothing more than the original, but nothing to lose. Yours looks correct, and Mandy and PCLOS, always used that form, but SUSE always did it as I've shown, which is why I tried it on the one machine where it actually did made a difference.

Edit: As your partitions are actually out of order, and the Windows partition is actually the second partition as far as cylinder count goes, you might also try;

title Windows 3
    rootnoverify (hd1,1)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

[Was_Just19]

Taking your Win 2 and Win 3 stanzas above they do indeed cause Grub to try to boot each of the two partitions .......  dropping the noverify allows me to see which partition number it does not recognise.

The response time is different .....  indicating to me that it is actually almost booting the correct partition but getting a quick no from the other one ............  if ye know what I mean ...

I have tried about 20 different stanzas with various combinations of partition number, with map and without, using map number and map hds and so far nothing.

I wonder if the disk is "alive" when Grub tries to boot it .......  maybe it is some form of delay ......

getting desperate .....

[Was_Just19]

As I appear to be going around in circles with this, I think I may have to reconsider a reinstall of PCLOS using ext3 partitions and not ext4 ..........  although I have no idea how that might effect what is happening.

[Old-Polack]

I hate to go for the simple and obvious, but someone has to. Have you checked to be sure the cable connections to the hard drives are secure, at both ends?  

[Old-Polack]

As I appear to be going around in circles with this, I think I may have to reconsider a reinstall of PCLOS using ext3 partitions and not ext4 ..........  although I have no idea how that might effect what is happening.

My original installation was to an ext3 partition. All others have been to ext4. The ext4 was much faster loading, takes less time for a fsck, and has given no problems here. I really don't see how either would affect a Windows boot, in any way.

[Was_Just19]

I hate to go for the simple and obvious, but someone has to. Have you checked to be sure the cable connections to the hard drives are secure, at both ends? 

    I did not specifically check them, but had unplugged and reinserted them when testing for booting the XP drive without the PCLOS drive connected. 

It would not at all surprise me to find this is something just as simple .......  so if you have any other simple checks please add them .......  I may have forgotten .........

As I said .....  I do not see how the change from ext3 to ext4 could affect things either .....  but I am running out of options  .......  If I could get hold of the Grub files from 2009 and maybe try those .......

One last option that just occurred to me ............  whether it is possible that the owner was having difficulty booting into Win recently and has not thought to inform me ..... he is out of country at the moment.

If so then I have been wasting my time and everyone elses time also. I think he is due back tonight sometiime ......

With that in mind .......  where then to look?  what would that bring into the mix?

see I told ye I am getting desperate ......   

[ThirdOfSix]

JohnBoy,

If, without changing any cables or anything, you go into the BIOS and change the boot order of the two drives, does it boot into Windows as it should?

If so, that should eliminate any possibility of cabling problems.

This sounded like something I have seen a few times right up until you said that it is printing out the whole Windows stanza on the screen.

That makes it sound like it does not see the end of the line and therefore thinks that everything in the stanza is the description of the install.

Could it be that grub is interpreting the character set wrong for some reason and does not know that there are multiple lines involved?

Is there any chance that you edited this file at some time with the wrong editor that has inserted non-printing characters that are causing havoc?

I know that this is unlikely, but I started out in the days when every desk had a different operating system on it and you never knew knew what was actually in a line of text until you looked at it with a hex editor.

It tended to be very frustrating at times when folks mixed "text" from different machines.