Yes it's possible that two WinXP installations are confusing the boot
but question is why you'd want two WinXP's anyway ? Also is there a
particular reason for keeping 8.04 ?

Many thanks for your replies. Sorry for the delay, but I'm working with
difficulties on an unfamiliar computer, while I sort out the problem!

The only reason for wanting to keep the original XP, is that I have an old
e-mail & news program, which would be difficult move. Although I don't use it
any more, it's got mail going back 10 years. Unfortunately, it's not compatible
with other mailers.

The Ubuntu 8.04 just happens to be one one of the disks. I plan to copy the
bookmark file, and then delete 8.04.

as has been already said why two XP copies?

Normally there is no resizing necessary when XP is on a HD, you just
load the !0.04 to install and it sorts out the free part of the drive.
Then grub works fine.

I can't find the op right now, but Clive, if you partition the drive
first THEN install windows then ubuntu, you will probably find things
going very smooth. Generally it is resizing windows outside of it's
own utilities that causes problems. There are some people I have seen
claiming they can resize windows and there are no problems. I have
never experienced that particular bit of magic. My rule is either
partition before install or else plan to pull out the trusty windows
recovery cd.

In the past I resized Windows, and put Ubuntu into the free space, without any
problems.

My feeling is that it might be due to the combination of PATA & SATA drives &
grub not knowing which is which.

Suspect the problem is because you disconnected the PATA drives when
doing the install then re-connected to install Ubuntu 9.04. If you
disconnect the PATA drives does the SATA drive boot OK ?

What happens if you only connect the Ubuntu 8.04 drive ?

This e-mail program you don't want to lose the messages from. Does
it have a way of exporting messages to a CSV or some other format that
could be imported by a newer e-mail client ? Would help if we knew
what this ancient e-mail client was too

When I disconnect the PATA drives, it just boots into the newly
installed WinXP, without the Grub menu.

I haven't tried with just the Ubuntu 8.04 drive. I'll have to do some
more experiments with various drives connected, and will let you know
the results.

The e-mail & news client is ZIMACS. It was specific to my original ISP
Zetnet, and is not compatable with any other system. In the days of
dial-up it was particularly useful as messages were compressed before
transmission.

Unfortunatly, two years ago Zetnet was taken over by another ISP which
killed off Zimacs and lost most of its loyal & happy customers. Many had
been with them for up to 15 years. It also had a strong social side,
which still continues through a member's website.

AFAIK there isn't any easy way to export mail from ZIMACS, into a format
which could be read by modern e-mail program.

I've now done a few tests, which I hope
will give a clue to the problem. I didn't try the Ubuntu 8.04 drive
alone, as it doesn't have a bootable partition.

Firstly, the GigaByte GA-7N400 Pro2 Mobo has the following booting
options in its CMOS HDD-0 ... HDD-3, SCSI, and various other devices.

It has two PATA sockets, and two SATA sockets. There are also another
two PATA sockets, which AFAIK are used for RAID setups. The user manual
doesn't say which boot option to use for serial drives, but it seems to
be HDD-3.

Running Gparted shows the first PATA drive sda ... sda1 FAT32,
boot,lba. sda5 NTFS, sda6 NTFS

The second PATA drive sdb ... sdb1 ext3 lba, sdb5 swap.

The first serial drive sdc ... sdc1 fat32, boot,lba sdc2 NTFS

The second serial drive sdd ... sdd1 NTFS, boot sdd5 EXT3, sdd5 swap

sdd has the new installation of WinXP, which won't boot. Ubuntu 10.4 on
this disk boots OK. XP on sda and Ubuntu on sdb are also OK.

With all the drives connected the same results are obtained when the
CMOS is set to HDD-2 or HDD-3.

When I try to boot XP on sdd I get the message "Windows NT found only 0K
of low memory. 512K of low memory required required."

With the SATA drives removed CMOS set to HDD-0 .... blank screen

HDD-1 ... message displayed - "No active partition"

HDD-2 ... message displayed "Error No such device" followed by a long
string of about 36 characters containing letters, numbers & dashes.

If I just have only the SATA drives connected, and the CMOS set to HDD-3
then the new installation of WinXP boots OK, without the grub menu being
displayed.

Hoping this may give a clue to the problem, and looking forward to any
help or suggestions.

Although you can save a step by setting up windows on only part of your
hard drive from the start, most people don't have trouble resizing the
hard drive with windows already installed on the complete hard drive. I
have done so on over a hundred PCs using gparted. Gparted is on the live
disk and what is used by the installer when installing Ubuntu. You can
use Gparted by selecting try Ubuntu when the computer starts from the
disk. I have found that some newer machines are setup with all four (
the limit) partitions. I always make an extended partition to install
Ubuntu on no matter how many partitions there are remembering that if
there are 4 you must remove one to continue. The installer will start
with to many partitions being used on the hard drive but will fail.

If the set up fails to complete the grub is not installed. said another
way, the setup program waits until it feels the setup went without a
snag to install the grub because installing the grub with a broken
system is a make or break proposition. well it is if you don't know what
you are doing anyhow.

What can make a setup fail?

A piece of hardware that drivers are not available for. This problem is
more pronounced with no Internet connection.
Some machines I have installed Ubuntu on, had Wifi cards that drivers
had to be downloaded for. The install completed but the Wifi did not
work until the drivers were installed. I had to use a 3G or Ethernet
connection to complete the install. I find it easer to install from the
gitgo with an Internet connection rather than with WiFi.

When an important piece of hardware is not recognised, the install can
take a very long time. this is because it keeps looking for a substitute
driver or whatever. It is likely the install will fail, even if you let
it take it's time. You can complete the install by going into BIOS and
turning off offending hardware. I had to do that with the first install
I attempted, this was before athros wifi cards were supported.

When all is said and done. The only recent failures I have had, were
when all 4 partitions were taken by the manufacturer (an easy fix
because the tools partition tools can be downloaded from the
manufactures site). Also one time with a faulty piece of hardware (fully
supported). The time that comes to mind, the boot sector was failing and
the owner wanted to install Ubuntu to try to fix the machine that
wouldn't work with the Windows that was already having problems on the
machine. A new HD and off he went.

Did you update the Grub 2 menu after all the changes were made?

If not that would be the first thing that I would try

Note : Use Ubuntu 10.04, which has Grub 2, Ubuntu 8.04 uses Grub 1.

The last thing I did was to install Ubuntu 10.04. which generated a
Grub 2 menu, with all the operating systems listed with their correct
partitions. It's just the new installation of WinXP which won't boot.

I'm not sure where Ubuntu 10.04 has installed its boot software.

I'll have to do some more experiments, to be sure about what is actually
happening.