Windows installed on second partition, how to add it to boot menu?

Question

I'm using Debian 6.0.6 Squeeze at the moment, I installed it over Windows XP.

It's just one hard drive where I first installed Windows XP and than used some Windows tool to make partition where I later installed Debian

Now, I can easily boot in Debian but there is no sign of Windows. I tried few things recommended on line, but still I couldn't get it working

I tried os-prober, tried to edit grub.cfg (I managed to add Windows XP to menu but this is just empty link, when I enter nothing happens (blank screen), where should it link to?)

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also this, after fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c0014

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               2        4663    37447484+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda2            4664        4864     1614532+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5               2        2032    16313976    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6            2033        4663    21133476   83  Linux

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update-grub

Generating grub.cfg ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686
done

Answer 1

From the previous answer I gathered, that you are probably using grub2. The correct way to manually add a menu entry is through the /etc/grub.d/ directory.

Create a file 01_windows_xp (change the number according to the ordering you want, linux got the 10_) and add the following to it:

echo "Adding Windows XP to the Menu..."
cat << EOF
menuentry "Windows XP"
        set root=(hd0,5)
        chainloader +1
}
EOF

Then rerun update-grub. You can look at the generated /boot/grub/grub.cfg afterwards. This way the new menu entry will survive a kernel update, where update-grub will be run automatically.

Answer 2

Assuming you did not overwrite your windows installation (you said you installed "over" windows XP?), the following commands should be enough. If not, please update your question with their output:

sudo update-grub
Sudo grub-install /dev/sda

Answer 3

edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst using your preferred text editor with sudo. add the lines:

title Microsoft Windows XP
root (hd0,5)
chainloader +1

run:

sudo update-grub
sudo grub-install /dev/sda

reboot & done

if using grub2:

the configuration file is located here:

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

and the lines added should be:

menuentry "Microsoft Windows XP" {
set root=(hd0,5)
chainloader +1
}

run:

sudo update-grub
sudo grub-install /dev/sda