I have just installed RedHat Fedora Core 4 on a PII 433. The install worked fine, and I clicked to reboot after it was done. My computer now tells me there is no OS. Help!

FC4 installed GRUB on hda1, which is my linux partition.

if grub is in hda1 then its in a partition and NOT in the master boot record.

what bootloader is currently in MBR?

if nothing see if FC cd has a rescue mode to allow grub to be put in mbr.
I prefer a live cd such as kanotix.....and its
open a terminal
commands
su
grub
root (hd0,y) (in grub speak as per tutorial where is your /boot partition
setup (hd0)

i had same issue with different hardware. fc4 was a bad remake of fc3 with updates thrown in, try uping to fc5 with a hard wipe, f4 is jsu not quiality like fc3 and 5......thats my only real advice, from a guy with same problem.

I have tried several text installs and I had the option of the MBR or the boot sector of hdc. This time I just let linux decide and it put it in the boot sector of hda1, so I'm assuming that is the MBR.

I will download FC5 as suggested.
thx, and I hope this works.

tyrianca: No, the master boot record is the first sector of the disk, whereas a partition boot sector is the first sector of a partition.

For grub to boot anything, stage1 needs to be installed in the MBR and to be pointing to a valid grub setup.

Writing stage1 to a partition boot sector is useful when you want to use a different boot director like BootMagic or when you want to redirect the boot from a different linux installation on the system.

Like aus9 pointed out, use your installation media to boot into rescue mode (boot: linux rescue) and then reinstall/reconfigure grub after you chroot the installation. You should look through the Grub Manual section on reinstalling/reconfiguring grub: http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...l#Installation

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Regarding FC4 being a bad distribution, that’s bullshit and trashtalk. It’s true that your hardware might work better on one FC version vs another, or even better on a different distro, but to condemn a widely used and accepted distribution is not useful or helpful.

I have personally installed FC3 and FC4 on lots of systems and think they are both fairly nice. But FC4 is more up to date than FC3 and, likewise, FC5 is more up to date than FC4.

And contrary to what you might think, FC really isn’t designed for beginners. What may seem to you to be a major problem with grub is really a trivial thing to fix for someone with more experience. You face a lot of minor stuff like that in FC that you face don’t in the more beginner-oriented distros.