windows xp on a second hard drive

This is just a little note to myself (and to anyone else who may have this problem in the future). Windows refuses to boot unless it is installed on the first (primary/master) hard drive in your system. For most people, that’s not too big of a deal, but I’m installing it on the second one. Fortunately, GRUB (a boot-loader for linux) has a work around for this:

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

The 2 lines beginning with ‘map’ are the key to making this work.

Note: this should also work with other versions of Windows (2000/98/95), although Vista may be a completely different animal.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *