Dual-boot, 3 HDDs, GRUB and Windows - Windows' bootloader hangs (may be for grub-dev?)

[roomcays]

Hi there,
I have been a GNU/Linux user for some time now, recently I have had two IDE
hard disks, configured as follows:

* 1st IDE/ATA HDD with Windows XP - let me call it Disk1
* 2nd IDE/ATA HDD with Linux + GRUB boot manager - I shall call it Disk2

However, in BIOS I swapped boot sequence, so my computer was always booting
from Disk2 as the first disk. I had then GRUB to choose which operating
system I'd like to work on.
Of course, Windows XP cannot boot properly when is not on the Primary
Master, but that was easy to fix using common workaround with GRUB hard disk
mapping:

(...)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
(...)

This worked all fine, until I connected third hard disk, throught SATA
controller:
* 3rd SATA with Linux (Gentoo) and GRUB as well - I will call it Disk3


OK. Disk3 is SATA disk and thus is recognized as last disk available in GRUB
(hd2) but as first disk in Ubuntu (/dev/sda).

Now the problem:
Suppose I have done nothing with /boot/grub/menu.lst, so it looks now just
like when I had only two disks:

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic
root=UUID=8f7669c5-a3bc-4532-ac2c-d6ec1df721ea ro quiet splash
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

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

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic
root=UUID=8f7669c5-a3bc-4532-ac2c-d6ec1df721ea ro single
initrd          /initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

Now the weirdest part:

1. On the very beginning, when I just connected fresh, clean, unformated
Disk3 to my computer Windows XP started one or two times. Then I did some
nasty partitioning and formating on Disk3 (so I could install there Gentoo
AND have two additional cross-system partitions with NTFS) 

2. ...Windows XP stopped to boot! It was showing no errors, just blank black
screen (...of death). It was just like when you try to boot Windows XP from
second hard drive without mapping workarounds. So I tried thousands of
configurations and looked through million of web pages to find the solution.
I've found nothing, but...

3. ...Super Grub Disk. When I boot from SGB-CD I can boot windows normaly
AND - which I discovered reading all of its GRUB configuration files - it
does not do hard drive mapping! It just:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

That's it! The other thing is that SGB boots Windows from (hd0), however
this is a cause of BIOS I supose, because when it finds bootable CD-ROM it
does not swap hard drives later on.

4. the BONUS: after booting Windows XP once from SGB (the one which uses
C:\boot.ini to display on windows start) something changed. Now (without
SGB, booting from Disk2) after selecting Windows XP from GRUB's menu I can
see Windows bootloader menu and even countdown timer is running, but if I
press Enter (or wait for timer to go off) computer hangs and only hard reset
can help...



So now I have absolutely no idea on what to do...
I've tried some tricks with Windows' boot.ini file, but I don't know how to
boot other disks (not partitions) this way.
I am thinking about putting GRUB on Disk1 (so on the disk where Windows is
installed), but I'm not too sure of effects of this. I don't want to mess
with my disks, I have important data on both of them (the SATA one is for
now almost clear).
Could anyone help me?
Maybe some of you have experienced this kind of weird behaviour of stupid
Windows? And maybe this idea of putting GRUB on Windows' disk isn't bad?

Please, any comments are welcome.
Thanks in advance!

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