I've been dealing with computers for years now, but have always been a windows user, but after trying knoppix, I became curious and decided to try out mandrake 10. The problem I'm having is that after the install and the final reboot, it boots directly to windows. I'm guessing that my problem is maybe the placement of bootloader, or something to do with the linux partition not being "active". I have a pretty typical system nowadays, nforce2, athlon xp 2500 OCed, 512 ram, audigy2 ect. I think that where my situation is different, is that I have 4 hard drives. 2 - 60gb, one 200gb, and one 10k rpm 36gb SATA. The last drive, the SATA one, is where I have windows installed. When I did the linux install on this drive, I partioned 10gb for linux and let it do the auto sizing, and it allocated about 5gb for root, 5gb for home, and a little for swap. I know that I'm not the only one who's had a problem like this, but I searched the forums and can't find an answer to help me. I hope some of you linux experts can help me with this noob problem =)

I am having the exact same problem, but with RedHat 9. If you don't feel like reading all the background, skip down to the last line.

Sitting with a 1.4Ghz Duron, 640 SDRam, 1-80Gb HD, 1-3Gb HD. 1-6Gb NTFS partition for Windows, 1-5Gb NTFS partition for an Adobe scratch (overkill I know), 1-55Gb NTFS partition for graphics work, 1-9Gb ext3 partition for the RH install, and 1-1Gb swap partition for the swap. The 3Gb has a VFAT partition to share my music/movies between RH and XP.

Here's what I've done. Install just like usual, but install no boot loader. This way I have to use the boot disk to boot red hat. No big deal. It's how I did it with 8. Worked just fine.

Got bored one day and thought it would be fun to install 9. Did a fresh new install, not an upgrade. When attempting to boot from the boot disk, I get a "boot failure" message. OK, well crap. So I go back and install everything, but this time install LILO. This time try to boot, skips right over anything and goes straight to XP. Did the same thing with GRUB.

Problem is, I don't want to install a boot loader, I just want to use a floppy. Why is it giving me a boot failure message? I made a new boot disk for 9, and installed everything the exact same way I did with 8, but minus all the *crap* that I would rather compile myself (text internet, graphical internet, you know..)

Last line: Boot failure when booting from floppy boot disk on fresh install of RH9. Don't want to install boot loader. Just want to boot from floppy. What's the deal? Thanks-

Maybe a bad floppy?

alfdog: Try manual paritioning (it's not so hard) and make sure to make a / partition, a swap partition and a /boot partition. You can make a home partition so it will be easier to switch linux the next time you install it. I am not much of an expert but I think you should reinstall and make sure you make all of the above partitions and install boot loader. It worked for me, but I got a warning from a friend on which partitions to make.

are both windows and linux on the same disk, or different disks ?

also, boot knoppix or any bootable media that can read ext3 partitons, mount your boot partiton, and post the contents of the (mount_point)/grub/grub.conf file.

if linux is installed on a eperate disk, make sure you correctly set (in the bios) which disk to boot (the disk that linux put grub on the MBR)

>> Qwijibow

What you say man!
Just put both opps on the same HD, elso lilo does crazy stuff. (like the 07 07 07 07 07 07 ... error)
that's how I fixed my problem. (only 2 HD's)

luck

lol.. i use GRUB.

This is very simple :
microsoft's main task is to avoid computers being used with other systems, I think you already know that.
So with latest windows releases, you are not partitioning with standard methods, but with microsoft"s own method.

The solution is not fun, though :
- Install Linux, with a minimal installation, and a actual partitioning
- Install windows on the intended partition;the windows installer should not have any partitioning task to perform
- Reinstall Linux with the actual options

My booting problem was the result of a bad floppy.

As for insalling Linux and Windows, jojo has it all wrong. Here's how you can do it and save yourself an hour or so:

Figure out the way you want your partitions lined out. Mine are like this:
80 Gb HD
5Gb for Windows
3Gb for Fedora Core 2
1Gb Fedora Swap
1Gb Adobe Scratch (if you don't do graphic design, you don't need to worry about this at all)
50Gb My Documents partition
20Gb Music space

The key here if you want to make your documents and music available to both systems is to format your partitions FAT-style. Linux doesn't read NTFS (and if I'm wrong on this, please email or PM me and let me know)

1. Install Windows and when asked about your partitioning, set up just your Windows partitions and leave the rest blank.
2. Install Linux to your blank space with the instructions above about the /swap space.
3. Be sure to let Grub know about your Windws partition!!

Then just mount your document and music drives and you should be set. If I left anything out, I'm sorry. Someone came into my office and killed my train of thought. Bling bling.

It reads NTFS okay. Problems are (were?) with writing to NTFS. So the most reliable way is FAT if you can do without the file security of Linux...