Booting Windows from a separate Hard drive

[Stefan Misch]

Hello,

I have a problem configuring Grub to Boot Windows XP Pro from another hard drive 
than what Grub is located on. The problem is that grub keeps booting the wrong 
windows installation that is on the same hard disc as grub.

From what I understand the options

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

should suffice to get XP booted but it doesn't work. I don't know why but it 
keeps booting the wrong hard disc (another win2k installation).

My Google-Fu is failing me to get around my problem which is why I'm posting it 
here.

* DETAILED DESCRIPTION:

Here's my setup:
2 Discs connected via S-ATA

name
sda

sda1    Win2k
sda2    Swap
sda3    Linux (Ubuntu 8.04)
sda4    /home

sdb
sdb1    WinXP pro
sdb2    Fat32 - data
sdb3    ext3 data


Grub was installed along with Ubuntu after Win2k was installed. The auto 
recognition worked flawlessly and I have the grub menu option to boot it along 
with Ubuntu.

Later (yesterday) I installed XP on the second hard drive.* Now I want to add XP 
in the menu so I added the following lines to /boot/grub/menu.lst

"
title           Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root    (hd1,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1
"

This is basically the same entry as the above autogenerated entry for Windows 
2000. I only changed "(hd0,0)" to "(hd1,0)".

But ... it loads Win2000. I checked the boot.ini-files for both installations to 
make sure that I haven't accidently told the XP bootloader to load the wrong 
windows. Now I have a boot menu in both boot loaders. I can still boot XP by 
telling the BIOS to do so and it shows the menu.

I also checked the grub command line at boot time. Typing "root (hd" and then 
the Tab-key shows that grub detects both discs and also all partitions. Even 
when I enter the commands in the menu line (see at the beginning) it does boot 
hd0,0 :-(

Am I doing something wrong? Did I encounter a bug? Is there a way to tell stage 
2 to be more verbose before doing something?

Oh, and before I forget, my grub version is: "grub (GNU GRUB 0.97)".

All best,
Stefan



*)I don't know if this matters but I resized the Fat partition and created an 
extra partition at the beginning. Before the XP installation Linux handled the 
XP partition as sdb3 even though it was physically the first. This changed when 
XP was installed. I assume this happened at the time it wrote the new MBR.