Linux Gurus - OS Boot Loader - Fedora 3 & Windows XP

[skadoo323]

Hey Everyone,

I've been interested in learning more about Linux so I downloaded the latest version of Fedora Core 3. I have my primary hard drive with the Windows XP OS, and then used a slave drive for my Linux OS. Both drives are on a cable to the primary ide slot. The installation for Fedora seemed to go perfect, but then when it was time to reboot after the installation, I rebooted, but no OS boot loader menu came up. My system just booted right into Windows XP as it would usually do. Does anyone have any advice on how to get the boot loader that comes undled with Fedora to work? During the installation process for Fedora, I did choose to install the boot loader. On my system at home I have installed this in a fairly similar manner and had no problems at all. When installing Fedora for both systems, when the boot options came up during the installation, I chose to have Windows XP as my default OS to be loaded after 3 seconds. Thanks in advance for any help and advice.

 

[drag]

Not sure what happenned.

Could be that you installed the bootloader into the secondary harddrive instead of the one your booting off of. Could of never been installed. Could of ...

Not sure. Can you select in your bios to try to boot off of the second harddrive?

Fedora has a 'rescue disk' you can try that see if that helps you out.

 

[Hyperblaze]

I agree with drag. Chances are you probably did not install lilo or grub on master boot record.

I have 0 experience with Fedora Core 3 install menu though (I avoid redhat and fc like the plague) so can't be sure what options are available.

You can easily add grub to your master boot record though.

Mostly by doing this

#grub
grub>root (hd0,0) (in most cases)
grub>setup (hd0) (this will install grub)

edit: just make sure the options are right in grub.conf located at /boot/grub/grub.conf

the last thing you want is to not be able to go where you want to in grub.

If your grub is messed up for any reason and you need to get rid of it in order to fix it....

boot up with a boot disk and at dos prompt type "fdisk /mbr"

 

[skadoo323]

just wanted to give an update. i reinstalled fedora core 3 and still i have the same problems. this is very weird. i got it to install perfectly on my machine at home, but wanted a copy on my system at my apt at college. i tried the rescue cd and that didnt help much. i still cant get a boot loader. i think i may give mandrake a try.

 

[djdrastic]

Have you tried HyperBlaze's fix ? Thats worked more or less everytime I've tried it . I also agree with drag . I think you are perhaps installing the grub bootloader on the 2nd drive and not the first one

Can you perhaps post us a shot of your fdisk [list partitions , I think p or something like that] / cfdisk . Make sure you've turned off all thoser annoying "virus" checkers in the bios , as they've caused an insane ammount of sh!te when I've installed grub based bootloaders

 

[skadoo323]

i installed mandrake linux and had the same problem. the boot loader isnt installing onto my primary hard drive's mbr.

 

[bersl2]

I personally have much more experience with LILO. This is an abridged and edited version of my lilo.conf, which writes into the MBR of the first hard drive. Edit it as needed and run /sbin/lilo as root. Or does FC not even have it?

boot = /dev/hda
prompt
timeout = 50
vga = normal
image = /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10
root = /dev/hda3
label = Linux
append = "hdc=ide-cd hdd=ide-cd"
read-only
other = /dev/hda1
label=Windows

Although I like GRUB's style, I can't seem to understand how to configure it yet. Oh well, I'll get around to it.

 

[skadoo323]

i think i figured out what i was doing wrong. the installation was seeing my largest hard drive as my boot hard drive, but that is not the case. I have win xp on an 80 gig drive instead of my spare 160gig drive. I installed linux on my old 20 gig drive. The installation kept placing the boot loader on my 160 gig drive, which isnt even the drive that is the primary drive (since my 80 gig drive is). but anyways i figured out how to point the boot loader onto my 80 gig hard drive mbr. although now when i boot, the system boot but just displays GRUB then freezes. pretty weird. i will play with it a lil more. now my windows xp OS wont boot at all since I the install overwrote the previous mbr, but i think i can fix this by using the fixmbr command or format mbr.

 

[skadoo323]

just wanted to give an update. i finally got it to install a boot loader properly. i tried something really simple, which i should of tried from the start. i disconnected my spare hard drives (from the power supply cable) and only kept my winx xp hard drive and the hard drive i wanted to install linux on connected. i then ran the install, rebooted the system and finally a boot menu! i reconnected my drives back and all is working well. so far so good. thanks for the advice guys!

 

[imported_JFG]

Originally posted by: skadoo323
just wanted to give an update. i finally got it to install a boot loader properly. i tried something really simple, which i should of tried from the start. i disconnected my spare hard drives (from the power supply cable) and only kept my winx xp hard drive and the hard drive i wanted to install linux on connected. i then ran the install, rebooted the system and finally a boot menu! i reconnected my drives back and all is working well. so far so good. thanks for the advice guys!

I could never get my dual boot to work. Like you it freezes at GRUB. I have XP on the primary. I had to run fixmbr to get back in to windows. I have 2 HD's & Windows on the primary. I still can't figure out why it didn't work