I have previously installed RHL 9 and FC 1 with no problems. I decided to perform a clean install with FC 2 so I could take advantage of all of the new features (some of them don't work when upgrading).

I chose to place the boot loader (GRUB) in the first sector of my primary partition of my Linux drive (PATA: slave on primary channel). After the install was finished, I clicked the Reboot button like instructed.

When the computer started up again, it booted XP. I changed the boot order so that the computer would boot from IDE-1 instead of IDE-0. When I rebooted the computer, it stated that it found a boot record on IDE-1. "GRUB" appeared on the next line and the computer sat there with no activity for at least twenty minutes.

I tried the boot diskette that I had made for FC 1 to see if it could boot FC 2. Unfortunately, that diskette was set up to boot the 2.4.x kernel instead of the new 2.6 kernel. Many errors occurred during the boot sequence and kudzu appeared several times stating that items such as my keyboard and integrated LAN controller were no longer connected to my computer. Subsequently, X was unable to start.

How can I get anaconda to let me create a boot diskette so I am not forced to put GRUB in the MBR to boot FC 2? I have never had this problem in the past.

There is no boot diskete in FC2. There is a rescue CD (70 MB or so). Download the iso in your XP, burn and boot from that.

I tryed the rescue CD, but all it gave me was a shell prompt with my FC 2 instalation mounted in a directory. I still am not able to get FC 2 to boot.

Ok so you are into FC2 already. Did ti mount your system at /mnt/sysimage? Was there a note saying so?

OK DO THIS BEFORE CONTINUING (Leave the text under for next post , OK?)
run these commands one by one:

/sbin/fdisk -l
(remember what this posts. write it down!)

cat /boot/grub/grub.conf
(remember what this posts. write it down!)

Post both of these here.

If nothing happens from those two commands do:

chroot /mnt/sysimage

and then try the above two commands again.


-------------------------------------------------------------------
LEAVE THE TEXT BELOW FOR THE NEXT POST!!!
DO NOT PROCEED BEFORE POSTING THE OUTPUT OF THE ABOVE TWO COMMANDS!!!


I don't know as I haven't booted into FC2 from rescue CD. If it did say that your system is at /mnt/sysimage, then do a :

chroot /mnt/sysimage (won't hurt if it didn't because the directory doesn't exist then, so you can do this in any case just to be sure)

The other thing for you to do is run:

/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

This WILL install grub to the MBR and thus wipeout your abilities to boot into XP, until you make them happen, unless they are configured in GRUB already.

The anaconda resue mode told me that my system had been mounted under /mnt/sysimage

Here is my session in the rescue shell:

Ok it is safe for you to go into rescue mode again and do the following:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

This will install GRUB loader on your primary disks (Windows disk) MBR. That way GRUB will be the default boot loader. At this point you can reboot. But if you want to be able to choose Windows right away, do the following first.

emacs /boot/grub/grub.conf

Add these lines at the bottom of the grub.conf file:

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Press CTRL+X+S (to save the file, this means CTRL+x and then +S while still holding CTRL and released X)
Press CTRL+X+C (to exit emacs)

However you can do this after if you wish, when you will be happy in fedora.



Good luck! At this point you should have rebooted already.

Thanks for the help, marghorp.

However, I was hoping to continue with the setup I had used with RHL 9 and FC 1. I was setup so whenever I started the computer, it booted to XP by default without grub being started. If I wanted to boot into Linux, I inserted a floppy into the computer that made grub start up and automatically boot into Linux.

I would use your solution, but this is the family computer and I am the only Linux user in the family and it would be an annoyance to the rest of my family. Also, the dual boot bug in FC 2 when installed with XP scares me. My dad would kill me if FC 2 killed XP. I have read that this bug only seems to occur when the boot loader is installed into the MBR. Also, I have never installed the boot loader into the MBR and never had any problems with booting.

Oh. So what is the problem? Boot from the disk. I thought you want a boot loader, why else would you install grub then?

As you wish, you are just missing a lot without the boot loader. And it can be made to boot directly to XP by default.

Where can I get a disk? Anaconda never gives me the oppurtunity to make one during the instalation and the one I made with FC 1 gives me all kinds of errors since it is made to boot the 2.4.x kernel.

If I can not make a boot disk, how do I get grub to automatically boot XP without coming up?

Well it can't without coming up, but you can limit it's time being up. Like 2 or 3 seconds. No one notices it.

The thing you have to do is install grub to MBR. I know it sounds scary and it is up to you. I didn't have any problems yet with it and I have installed FC2 for 10 times now, because of some mouse problems I had, which were BIOSrelated as I found out at last.

However I believe there is an option to boot Linux from XP with XP's boot loader. I think there was a post about that here someday. So If you are scared of putting grub in MBR, just search google for booting linux with XP.

Anyway just to explain how you would make it boot into XP automatically. in the grub.conf file there is a line saying:

default=0

The options below are title Fedora and title Windows XP, when you make the option for XP off course. So you have two options. The upper most is 0 and the next is 1 and so on.

So if you had:

title Fedora.....
......
.....
title Windows XP
rootnoverify....
chainloader.....

The default line should look like this to let you boot into XP automatically:

default=1

I think you get the point.

The line timeuot:

timeout=10

tells you how many seconds will the bootloader wait until selecting the default choice.

So change that to 3 and it should go by before you see it.

If you plan to go to linux though you will have to wait for the beep when BIOS starts (there will not be any output to the screen, at least there is none on my computer, because the monitor turns on later) and press up or down key on your keyboard to end the timeout procces and select Fedora at boot.


Good luck!

Peace!

Here is a link to the guide for using the Windows boot loader: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader.html
It is a little outdated (1997), but I think it should still be useful.

Is there a way to manually make a FC 2 boot disk or modify a FC 1 boot disk to boot FC 2?

I believe so, just see the syslinux.cfg file on your boot diskette, and change it accordingly to what oyu have installed on your system. It should work. Use grub.conf to help you adjust.

I found a thread that talks of how to make a boot disk. Here is its URL: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...?threadid=1272

I had to use the Rescue CD to make the boot disk.

Last night an idea occurred to me. Does each hard drive have its own MBR? If so, does the boot loader bug that hoses XP not effect you if FC 2 is installed on a seperate hard drive? Even though the boot floppy works, it is slow and cumbersome. It would be easier if i could boot right from the hard drive without needing the boot floppy or a grub-style boot menu that loads every startup. My computer's BIOS allows me to select the boot device interactively by pressing F8 during startup. I have been using this feature to load Knoppix and the FC 2 Rescue CD without having to mess with the BIOS's boot order.

I have continued this discussion in a new thread titled "Grub not installing correctly" (http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=188870)