adding Fedora 10 to dual boot with Win7?
 

last week i had Fedora 10 installed on my Lenovo T-60 laptop. i stuck a Gparted disk in and screwed it up. so having a RC for Win7, i loaded it instead. i still have my other linux partition. i want to dual boot with my favorite Fedora 10. so what are the pitfalls? or do i just load Fedora and point it to the right partition? thx for your help....Lenny

Pretty much, yes. Fedora will automatically detect the windows installation and make a boot entry for it.

i had heard somewhere where it's better to install Fedora first, then windows. any comments?

No, any version of windows first. Basic reason for this is that any version of windows AFAIK will overwrite the master boot record on installation and it doesn't matter what OS you have installed. Also does this without asking user or informing user.

I haven't installed Fedora since FC6 so I'm not positive but, from everything I read about more recent versions, Fedora will not detect other installations and you need to make a manual entry for them in your grub.conf file. It's a pretty simple thing to do though.

thanks yanek, i'm geting close to installing fedora again.....

you might want to install fedora 11
Fedora 10 will hit it's "End Of Life" in just over 1 month. about 45 days .

ok, gonna dload the 11 iso and install it. thx

ok,i loaded Fed 11 and what a big leap from 10, size wise anyway.

so i rebooted after a couple of software updates with no option to boot to Win 7. my laptop boots straight to Fed 11. so i was checking grub.conf and it is "x'ed" out. so is menu.lst. i click on them and the message says "grub.conf" is not available. whats up with that?

ok, it's early in the game but i'd still like to dual boot with Win 7.

next step? thx...

How are you doing this, using a file manager (don't know what Fedora uses)? You need to be root, most (well, some anyway) distros won't even let a non-root user read the file (menu.lst). Log in to a terminal as root user and navigate to the file using a text editor (don't know which Fedora uses but if you can boot into it you should be able to find it/one) and see what the entries are. No likely that you will have one for windows so you need to put it there.

Since we don't know your partition information, I can only guess. Assume windows 7 is on the second partition of the first disk you could put this entry in menu.lst:

title win 7
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

If your win 7 is on a different partition or you are not sure about this, log in to a terminal on Fedora as root and run the command: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L) which will output your partition information and you can post it here for specific instructions.

thanks yanek, here's what i got on fdisk.

[root@localhost snapperhead]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 60.0 GB, 60011642880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7296 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x64656469

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 3924 31517608+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 3924 3950 204800 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 3950 7296 26882680 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/dm-0: 25.4 GB, 25413287936 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 3089 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-0 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/dm-1: 2113 MB, 2113929216 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 257 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/dm-1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
[root@localhost snapperhead]# menu.lst
bash: menu.lst: command not found
[root@localhost snapperhead]# show menu.lst
bash: show: command not found
[root@localhost snapperhead]#


ALSO----------------

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,1)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=2
timeout=7
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE.img
title Fedora (2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i686.PAE)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i686.PAE ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.29.4-167.fc11.i686.PAE.img
title Win7
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

when i log into "other" after a reboot, it asks for my name and password in Win7. i can remember my password but not my windows ID. (i only had Win7 installed for about about 5 days....) so i didn't write it down....! i was only logging into Win7 with just a password anyway. is the ID issue in "other" keeping me from logging in? or is there something else you see here? thx again...lenny

Change your win 7 entry to:

You have win7 set as default, is that what you want?
Change this line near the top: hiddenmenu, to thie #hiddenmenu, put the hash mark in front so the menu is not hidden during boot.


I don't see an "other" listing in your grub.conf, unless you changed it to win 7? If you needed a password to log in to win 7 before, you probably still need it and an ID. You are able to log in to Fedora???

thx Yanek. i started reading and experimenting more. since i had the Win7 disk, i saw where i could boot up to the win7 disk on a restart. i then chose "startup repair". win7 went through a repair mode and said it couldn't be repaired. ok, i did it again. then i removed the disk and clicked finish. my laptop booted to GRUB to be edited. there i changed (HD0,1)to(HD0,0). i rebooted and FINALLY i got the option to choose Fedora or Win7.

i was gonna make a BCD disk there for a minute. BTW, the "other" i was talking about was when Fedora booted up to a login menu that gave you Fedora on top, and "other" on the bottom of that. i also had tried the #hiddenmenu comment before but that didn't help.

soooo,far dualboot is working. thanks again for your help. Lenny