GRUB problem

Psyk · 27 Apr 2006 at 00:42

I have an install of CentOS (which I never use, may get rid of it sometime) and XP. I use GRUB as my bootloader but now it doesn't come up when the machine boots. It just says GRUB at the bottom of the screen and doesn't do anything.

Here's a bit more background. I have to use GRUB to boot windows because my motherboard screws up the drive order when using both IDE an SATA hard disks (the IDE disk is always the first logical disk). This was all working fine until I unplugged the IDE disk to replace it with a disk that needed to be tested. When I plugged the old disk back in this problem happened. Now the only way I can boot windows is with a boot CD and manually booting windows via the GRUB command line.

I've tried doing the setup command from in GRUB and it says there are no errors but it doesn't make a difference.

Psyk · 27 Apr 2006 at 10:44

Is there any way to get drive information from the GRUB command line? All the disks are different manufacturers and sizes so I'd be able to tell them apart from that information. I'm not convinced that's the problem though because when I use the command line to boot windows, I'm putting in the exact same commands that are in the config file and when windows has booted everything's fine.

Psyk · 27 Apr 2006 at 16:53

For me it's on (hd2,0). So do I do "setup (hd2,0)"? I tried that but I still have the same problem.

Psyk · 27 Apr 2006 at 21:28

Berserker said:
Sounds like it would be a good idea to figure out why Windows is having a problem then, as it sounds like GRUB may now be having the same problem.

Oh I know exactly why. It's because the IDE disk is always hd0. Windows is on a SATA disk (hd1) and it doesn't like being booted from anything but the first disk so I use GRUB and it's map command to logically switch the two drives.

The problem is that my motherboard won't change the logical drive order even if you change the boot order.