no first boot after instaling

foca · 11-12-2005, 07:08 PM

I installed Linux in a second HD everything goes ok up to the moment of rebooting. the computer starts but nothing happens, it hangs up. Don't know what to do.

I have an AMD 64 2800, two sata hard drives, one with W Xp, the second with fedora linux

thanks

teckk · 11-12-2005, 09:47 PM

Give more info. Are you getting the boot loader menu? You installed to a SATA drive, can your BIOS boot from SATA? Does windows still boot? Where did you install the Linux bootloader? To MBR?

To boot Linux you need the bootloader to work, Lilo or Grub. Or if you are getting that far it could be hanging because of a piece of hardware or memory module not seated.

foca · 11-13-2005, 08:11 AM

Thanks for your help. I have two SATA drives. I installed linux in the second SATA drive. the first runs XP. When I put the XP SATA drive first in boot order, it runs windows. If I put the second SATA drive with Linux, first in boot order, the systems hungs up. I can see a cursor blinking and nothing else.

during the installation of the boot loader it offered three alternatives 1- "sda/dev1" which I understood as the XP HD
2- MBR and 3- sdb/dev1. I chose the third one

I have not bee able to start linux at all I believe

teckk · 11-13-2005, 10:14 AM

Quote:

When I put the XP SATA drive first in boot order, it runs windows. If I put the second SATA drive with Linux, first in boot order, the systems hungs up

Are you changing your boot order in your BIOS? Is that what that means?

I would install windows first, which you have done. Then install Linux second putting the boot loader on the master boot record of the same drive that you boot windows from. The first drive sda. When you install grub you should be prompted to add the windows boot entry. If not you will have to edit grub manually. If you install grub to the first drive, the drive that the BIOS is set to boot from, then you should be able to choose to boot either OS.

You can also use NTLoader to boot both OS. See a microsoft forum for that.

There are also 3rd party boot loaders that some people use.

The idea is to put the boot loader on the MBR of the drive that the BIOS boots to. Then when the machine boots it will pause at the boot loader with a prompt for you to choose which one.

There are other ways to do it like making a boot disk.
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Boot_floppy

Make sure that you back up everything important first in case you fowl it up.