hello... im pretty new to linux. ive tried a few distros in the past but i want to use fedora as my linux for good.

1.i have windowsxp pro on another partition on this harddrive. grub dosen't want to see it but i know its there and im not sure how to edit the grub.conf file or anything

2. if i go to install somthing my mouse will freeze up.. im using a usb mouse too..

like i said im a who wants to learn linux so thanks in advance for the help.

can answer your first question but not the second

first of all you will need to know how many hard drives and partitions you currently have on your system.

if you have one hard drive split into two partitions that is easy becuase the hard drive lable is hd0 for the first partition and hd1 for the second.

you will need to know which one your windows partition is located on

secondly you will need to edit you grub.conf file by using the command

gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

add the following to the end of this file


title Windows XP
# as far as I can understand it the Windows XP hard disk hd1
# needs to think it is the first disk on the IDE bus in order to boot
# so do a swap and add the following two commands to change it
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
# you then need to tell grub which hard disk and which partition to read the booting information from
# although you have done a swap using the above commands the disks don't change their labelling
# so use hd1,0 as the root device (in grub all numbering starts at zero)
# the telltale to knowing which partition to add to the rootnoverify option
# is the output of fdisk -l the `*' on /dev/hdb1 showing it's the active or boot partition
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
# now tell grub that you are going to be doing an indirect boot using an external chainloader
# i.e it's going to grab the Windows boot code and run it instead
# of directly loading the linux kernel like it usually does.
chainloader +1
# not sure exactly what makeactive does
# I'm assuming it is marking the root partition you specified
# with the rootnoverify command as the active or boot partition
# if it isn't already marked as the `*' or boot partition
makeactive




save the file and restart your computer