hello, i found this topic looking for xp bootloader problems.
may i offer my recent (3 days ago) experience with the latest ubuntu distro.
as a preface, i've been trying out linux since at least 5, and before that red hat, because it is such a great idea. unfortunately, i find i still have to do my work on windows. reluctantly moved up to xp from wonderful W2K about 4 years ago. and now considering a 7 install, but will wait a year or two for a service pack to come out.
vista was like living in a police state, and i ended up giving away a vista laptop for which there were essential XP drivers unavailable. so i am not a windows booster, it's just i know how to keep the whole creaky mess moving along.
so, after a nice painfree wubi install of ubuntu 10.x on its own tidy, last place partition on (hd0),
---moments like that, you have to love linux---but then, the update machine roared into life, and instead of letting me choose which updates i wanted (as it used to), it listed over 300 undates, and then in a flashing window ontop of the update app, it sternly warned that GRUB 2 was the latest thing, and if i didn't get it RIGHT NOW, then some of these 300 updates would be OUT OF SYNC.
so, even though i knew better, i forgot that i knew better, and i allowed ubuntu update to do what it wanted, including install GRUB 2, as part of the initial update.
so now, 30 hours of work later, and a total clean factory OS cd reinstall of win XP, and format of the laptop harddrive (erasing 6 existing well filled partitions),
this error message is still appearing
.....blah blah x numbers
GRUB rescue>
at least i have found a way to avoid the GRUB error and to load the xp OS, by making the boot order
1. cd
2. inside laptop HD
3. ext usb hd
4, 5, 6, usb keys, lan etc.
but if i change the boot order and put the ext usb hd above the inside HD, then the GRUB rescue> error still appears.
i read up on GRUB RESCUE and all the handy CLI commands that should have worked. but only 2 did anything to move the caret, and they did not rescue the boot.
so, i'm going to reflash the bios next thing. after that???
ubuntu 10.x isn't quite there yet, this time either.