Mageia forum

just as stated, i don't understand whats going on. This install disk has worked fine before, so i'm not sure.

Install the OS, had GRUB installed to MBR, then tried again to root(which i prefer) and same issue arises. No, i did repair the MBR on the main driver before trying to install to / of mageia disk, i am dualbooting XP.

ssoo. anyone have any suggestions?

Could you post the content of or attach your /boot/grub/menu.lst and /boot/grub/device.map? If you can't boot into Mageia,
you can use a tool like ext2explore under windows. You can get it here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2read/files/Ext2read%20Version%202.2%20%28Latest%29/ext2explore-2.2.71.zip/download
(just extract it and run it, does not need installation)

If can still boot Mageia, please also post the output of fdisk -l as root.

device.map

(hd0) /dev/sdb
(hd1) /dev/sda
(hd2) /dev/sdc

menu.lst

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=4042d823-78b8-4c90-a84e-e5b48ca9e814 resume=UUID=16105ffb-7753-4d37-9c83-e7949cbbe739 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=4042d823-78b8-4c90-a84e-e5b48ca9e814 resume=UUID=16105ffb-7753-4d37-9c83-e7949cbbe739
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=4042d823-78b8-4c90-a84e-e5b48ca9e814 failsafe
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1

I think you might try to switch disk order in the BIOS. Depending on your BIOS you have to find the Hard disks section, change the order of the first two. Now you try to boot. The problem seems to be a misconfiguration of the disks. Do you have ide and sata in the same machine?