Fedora and Win2000 - boot loader problem
 

I have a PC with Win2000 installed on my first 60GB hard drive.

I just installed a second hard drive and installed Fedora 2 on it. I configured Grub to boot into it by default and thought it was OK to go, even though it flashed up a warning before installation: "unable to align partition properly. This probably means another partition tool generated the incorrect partition table, bcause it didn't have the correct BIOS geometry. It is safe to ignore, but ignoring may cause (fixable) problems with bood loaders."

It boots into Linux fine, but I can't boot into Win2000 anymore. It keeps hanging at :

"chainloader+1"
and then just hangs interminably.

Here is my grub.conf file, which looks OK to me:
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL/ rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img

title Win 2000
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader+1


And this is what I get when I do: fdisk -l.
Disk /dev/hda: 61.4GB

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 1 110133 60042906 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hdb 81.9 GB

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 1829 9321784 83 Linux
/dev/hbb2 .... etc.etc.

What do I do now in order to be able to boot Win 2000?
I would be very grateful for any pointers!

artemis

when in grub, hit the 'c' key for cammand line mode

give grub the command "rootnoverify (hd0,0)"
what does grub say ? if anything ?

if windows200 an NTFS partiton or a fat partiton, if it if a fat rartiton use the command "root" instead of "rootnoverify"

now give grub the command
"chainloader +1"

what does grub say now ?
any error messages ?

now give grub the command
"boot"

this is the manual way of doing what the config file does automatically, but gives you the chance to read any error messages before the boot command is called.
post any error messages here for us to have a look at.

one thing i would have surgested before you installed fedora,
when you get to the part about the boot loader, go into advanced options and select install grub to hdb.
by default grub installs itself to hda (over the top of the windows boot loader)
which isnt a problem since grub can boot windows, but if anything did go wrong, you could have then used the bios options to select boot hda or hdb for different operating systems.

anyways, its too late for that now, but remember it for next time.

if you dont get any usefull error messages from booting manually, i would recomend re-installing grub.
get into grub, hit 'c' again for command line mode, and give grub the command "setup" and follow the on dcreen instructions.

Looks like I've found the solution after all in these pages. Frighteningly, this MAJOR bug with Fedora Core 2 was not picked up by any of the reviewers before I got my CDs.... I was flabbergasted to find that it hosed my Windows2000 MBR. Grub used to be such a trouble-free, straightforward installation in the past! Anyway I did what the others suggested, went into BIOS and changed my hard drive access mode to LBA (from auto) and it worked OK, I can now boot into Win2000 and Linux without any problems. Thanks!

artemis