goldengoddess?

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I"ve been having problems setting up a dual boot XP and Fedora. I am trying to use Partition Magic, but had some problems getting Fedora to not automatically boot. I now have both working and accessible by choosing to use a boot disk to boot linux, getting windows installed and using bootmagic, EXCEPT now if I want Linux, i just stick in the floppy and if I want windows, I boot without the floppy, which is undesireable.

How can I fix Linux so that it doesn't require a floppy disk to boot? I have them on two separate harddrives by the way and Bootmagic knows about the Linux partition on the second drive but can't boot it b/c it will only boot from the floppy.

Thanks!
~R

Boow

I've seen on google booting windows from a second hard drive. I suppose your setup its possible but i've never installed linux on a second hard drive so I can't help you much

post your /boot/grub/menu.lst would help also

tobrien

I am wondering if your cable selection might be in the way of which drive boots first? I have my laptop set up to dual boot, but there is only one hard drive. I would be curious to know if you changed the master and slave settings on the drive if that would change whether linux or windows would boot first. There should be away to set up both OSs on one drive so you wouldn't even need the second drive. The other thought would be to have a removable drive. Just some ideas

Tadge

rayjgu3

try lilo or grub they are linux boot loaders
there are lots of others but these are the most supported
a simple google.com search will pull lots of info

keep an eye on your boot up with fedora 1st thing youll see is either
grub or lilo

now we need to find where your hard drive is
primary master = /dev/hda (ide1 master)

secondary master = /dev/hdc (ide2 master)

scsi or sata drives would be sda or sdb

if lilo you need to edit /etc/lilo.conf
boot=/dev/hdX
where X is your hard drive
you will need to be root to edit this
once you have your proper hard drive recognized
at a prompt type
lilo

you hopefully wont get errors

if you use grub

at prompt type
grub-install /dev/hdX
where X represents your drive

or if you dont want linux to take over mbr you can
run this
dd if=/dev/fd0 of=/home/USER/linux.bin bs=512 count=1 <change USER to your username<<<<

copy the file named linux.bin to a floppy or email it to yourself to get it into windows
place linux.bin in C:

open C:\boot.ini

make it look like
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
c:\boot.lnx="fedora"


theres a whole world of info on this
http://www.google.com/search?q=linux...&start=10&sa=N

if you want to learn linux learn command line
& use google its the best encyclopedia on anything

jschiwal

There are also a number of how-to's on dual booting by using XP's NTLDR.exe program to chainload the linux loader, either Lilo or Grub. Google for "NT Lilo dual boot" or "NT grub dual boot" or search this site. There have been dozens of threads on this site explaining how it is done.

Of course you might try what the last message suggests also.