how do i run Grub on Knoppix 3.7

[ruymbeke]

...I was supposed to assume that Windows 2000 and XP are interchangeable

Yes and No. The boot principle of XP and 2000 is similar but not identical. Both are using a ntldr and boot.ini file to boot but as far as I know, the ntldr files are actually different. So grldr can be used for XP (bootgrub is actually embedded in the first blocs of grldr) and an alternate bootgrub is required to load grldr for 2000.

... I am quite interested in the thought of booting from DOS on the FAT32 partition... From my understanding of operating systems beyond Windows Millenium, there is no DOS. Since I am running XP, I am assuming that I do not have DOS. My question is this: Is there something that I am missing from your instructions of booting from FAT32 with DOS? Or do I need to somehow obtain a copy of DOS in order to accomplish this?

Yes you can boot from your fat32 partition using either your boot.ini (by adding a d:\="Dos, Win98/ME...") or using grub (and add an entry in your menu.lst like this (assuming that your fat32 is on disk0 partition 1, 0 being ntfs):
title Win 98 from (hd0,1)
chainloader (hd0,1)+1
boot
But before this will work, you shoud obviously have install a dos filesystem in your fat32 partition using the dos sys.com program. You can find a lot of dos boot disk on the net. I actually have the dos files in the Root_Of_USB of my grubd.zip. And the HPUSBFW.EXE program can be used to re-format a usb dongle with the required dos files and also make the dongle bootable, which is not that obvious ! Once booted from the usb dongle, you can sys.com your fat32 partition (I am sorry I did not include the sys.com file in my grubd.zip but here it is: http://s119307663.onlinehome.us/SYS.COM ). BTW, if you do not have a floppy drive you can still use grub and memdisk to boot from a floppy image file (.img or .ima) and format your fat32 from there (see the menu.lst in the \Root_Of_NTFS\BOOT\GRUB directory of my grubd.zip to load win311.img)

... You mentioned that I only need minirt26_ntfs.gz and grub.exe. Is there a special directory they need to go in or can they go into the root of the FAT32 partition?

The location of the kernel and initrd file are defined by the menu.lst file and they can be where ever you like, you just need to update the path. The menu.lst is searched by grub first in /boot/grub then in the root of each partition/drives until one menu.lst can be read and interpreted.

... NTFS drives have the ability to be compressed, and I set mine to compress data upon initial install of XP. I only have a 10GB harddrive. One possibility for the compression error is this fact, just in case anyone else is having this problem and feels bold enough to try uncompressing their drive if it is compressed.

To be honest, I never tried that and I can bet that grub cannot handle this compression at this time. Sorry...
So the best option I can see in your specific case of a compressed ntfs partition would be to boot dos from your fat32 partition (as discussed previously) and from dos you will run grub.exe (or loadlin.exe if you prefer lilo). Even though it looks like a little bit complicated, it works and all this can be executed very fast at boot time.

...It appears that the ruymbeke's file package in the Winpartition link is missing GRUB.EXE, which I believe needs to be in the root directory of NTFS if the c:\bootgrub option is to be used. Thanks again.

No, grub.exe is in the GRUB.BIN directory of my grubd.zip. It is only required to boot from dos. I use it with my usb dongle, boot floppy disk, or from fat16/32 partitions.

Thank you very much for your responses to these questions! I have not only learned a great deal about Knoppix from these forums, but also I have learned a lot in regards to my own operating system! Thanks again!

My pleasure. Hope this will help.
Best Regards, Gilles