Windows XP won't boot from TCL USB stick boot menu

[jano]

Hi !
After some time out I'm back to TCL. I've installed 4.5.5 to a usb stick and it has automagically created the extlinux.conf file to double-boot TCL and Windows. I've tweaked a little the TCL part, and it boots OK, but when I try to boot windows, it just goes back to the menu and won't boot.
Windows XP is in the first partition of the hard disk, fat32, and boots OK by itself (the problem is only when I try to boot it from TCL boot menu from the usb stick).

The extlinux.con file I have has a windows section which is identical to what's in http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:extlinux:

UI vesamenu.c32
MENU TITLE Tiny Core Bootloader
TIMEOUT 20

DEFAULT core
LABEL Tinycore
KERNEL /tce/boot/vmlinuz
APPEND initrd=/tce/boot/core.gz quiet vga=791 norestore swap waitusb=5:UUID="long number" tce=UUID="long number" opt=UUID="long number" home=UUID="long number"

LABEL windows
KERNEL chain.c32
APPEND hd0 1

Any help would be appreciated. TIA   jano

[KHarvey]

If it is the first partition have you tried changing it from APPEND hd0,1 to APPEND hd0,0?

[jano]

Thanks for the fast reply KHarvey !
Yes, I've tried APPEND hd0 0 -> same result.
Other modifications I've tried are:

APPEND hd0 2 -> no such partition and back to the boot menu
APPEND hd1 0   or  APPEND hd1 1 etc -> no luck either
APPEND makeactive hd0 1 -> this starts a text menu showing different options / parameters for chain.c32 and a boot > promt  => I've tried some of them without luck (and if I don't type something fast, it goes back to the boot menu ...
COM32 chain.c32 APPEND hd0 1 (writing COM32 instead of KERNEL, as shown in http://www.syslinux.org/wiki/index.php/Comboot/chain.c32) and other combinations for hdx y  -> without luck

[jano]

Time to give up 

[SS-396]

Hah, I didn't realize this was a necrobump.   

The link you posted shows a MBR serial number.  Have you tried that??  Seems like you should be able to get the serial number, then provide the serial number and it should search for it and boot it.

mbr:

The mbr: syntax means search all the hard disks until one with a specific MBR serial number (bytes 440-443) is found.
 
You can get the MBR serial number, by running the following command (change /dev/sda to the correct device):
 $ hexdump -s 440 -n 4 -e '"0x%08x\n"' /dev/sda
0x0ec8694c
 
Or by running:
$ fdisk -l /dev/sda
...
Disk identifier: 0x0ec8694c
 
Example:
LABEL mbr_serial
COM32 chain.c32
APPEND mbr:0x0ec8694c

Jason.

[genec]

You could try

Code: [Select]

APPEND swap hd1 1(depending on SYSLINUX version) since Windows doesn't like changing drive numbers typically.