Dual booting Linux with boot.ini, and two hard drives?

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Dear Experts,

I have successfully installed dual boot linux a number of
times. But recently, after changing my primary drive, I
have had nothing but problems. And I've tried everything that
you are supposed to do. I won't bother with the very
lengthy of what I did here, because that's not the question.

I do suspect that this might actually be a hardware issue
and I'm hoping to see the output from a (your) system that is
working correctly. If your system is successfully dual
booting Linux with the boot.ini file, please run the following
comamnds, and post the output here.


In linux,

df -k

- find the boot partition.
/dev/hdb5 101089 9321 86549 10% /boot


- make the linux.bin file again, if you don't have it.

dd if=/dev/hdb5 of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1


Stay in LInux. Then run the commands:


file linux.bin


strings linux.bin


strings linux.bin | wc


od -c linux.bin


And then, show me what you have for hard drive config.

I'm using two hard drives, C:\ (/dev/hda) for XP Pro.
And /dev/hdb for linux. I'm hoping to get the output
from a similar two hard drive system.


fdisk -l

dmesg | grep -i hd


Please also mention if you are using grub or lilo as the
boot loader. Also, any other settings that you did with
the install. Ie. lba32, etc. LInux brand and version.
Two versions of Redhat, and one of Suse all failed to
install dual boot successfully on my system.

And, if you remember, are the pins on your hard drives
configured with "cable select", or hard coded for master,
and slave?


On my system, I get this:

strings linux.bin

ZRrI
D|f1
GRUB
Geom
Hard Disk
Read
Error


I suspect that the "error", might in fact, indicate an error.
What a concept. If so, then, something more fundamental than
configuration is wrong with my system.


If you can help me out, I will really appreciate it.

BTW, all these commands give information output only, and will not
do anything to your system. The exception being the dd command.


Thanks a lot!