FC6 - GRUB with flashing cursor
Just installed Fedora Core 6 on my 80 GB drive and have my XP Professional on my 120GB drive. Both are SATA. XP is the primary drive while the other SATA is the new Fedora installation. I thought the installation went fine, but when I rebooted, right after the POST all I got was the word "GRUB" and a flashing cursor in the upper left corner. After this the system just freezes. No prompt, no Fedora and no XP. I had to go into the recovery console from my windows installation CD and did a fixmbr, fixboot, and bootcfg /rebuild to get my XP back. I am reluctant to try a reinstall again of Fedora, I was hoping it was something simple.
From the Fedora install CD I went into the linux rescue and did chroot /mnt/sysimage also tried grub> find /boot/grub/stage1 and got an Error 15:File not found when it most certainly was there. grub.conf seems to check out too. When I try to do a grub-install /dev/sdb but it saids it does not have any corresponding BIOS drive. I may be wrong here, but do I have to install grub onto /dev/sda ??? I really don't want it screw my Windows partition up. No matter what I do I still get that "GRUB" and flashing cursor. I basically overwrote my old FC4 (at the time I was using LILO) with FC6 but don't know if it is a Fedora problem or not. I would be very grateful for any help. I tried searching online and found many people have had the same problem but their solutions don't work, or just don't apply to my computer. |
there are a number of solutions so bear with me
You will need to note that I assume your /etc/fstab table is correct for the linux sata drive and Xp has a c partition of (hd0,0) read my tutorial please to grasp the grub speak A) bios detects sata 1 which is Xp data drive and its mbr produces 2 solutions sol 1 mbr has ntldr in it which can be made to chainload linux use the tutorial on how ntldr can chainload to linux in summary....install linux grub into the root partition of its /boot partition take an image of it and link it to your boot.ini file sol 2 mbr has grub which jumps to its booting files on sata 2 and can chainload xp means that you re-install grub , make sure that the /boot/grub/menu.lst has this title xp root (hd0,0) chainloader +1 title linux root (hdX,Y).....not enough info given in your post to be explicit kernel ....ditto initrd .....ditto you can post the output of your /boot if you have a live cd and your /etc/fstab if you are struggling The disadvantage of solution 2 is that if there is trouble xp tends to want to stuff up the bootloader and rewrite the mbr of the xp drive. so B) leave the mbr of xp drive alone use a live cd to install grub into mbr of drive 2...the linux one then solutions vary.....if your mobo allows you to select boot order sata 2 ahead of sata 1 your will get (3) if not (4) applies (3) grub detected....use a live cd to edit the hd numbers and the map commands as per tutorial as bios jumps to linux mbr jumps to sata 2 /boot/grub booting files so xp drive is now hd1 and not hd0....so the map commands apply your windows will look something like this in menu title xp root (hd1,0)....no longer hd0 map (hd1,0) (hd0,0) map (hd0,0) (hd1,0)....assuming /boot is on first linux partition makeactive chainloader +1 title linux root (hd0,0)....assumption as above kernel not enough info initrd ditto 4) bios can not jump to linux sata drive first so swap sata cables double check with a live cd that you put grub into the linux mbr and not overwrite your precious xp bootloader, heh heh as per tut terminal commmands are su grub root (hd0,0)....assuming grub is in first partition setup (hd0) quit then edit the new sata first drive....now linux /boot/grub/menu.lst file to reflect linux is hd0 and xp is hd1 and use the map commands as above |
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