FC4 not booting

I have the following partitions on my PC on two hard drives

/dev/hda1 - used by Dell - My PC is a Dell PC
/dev/hda2 - Win XP Home
/dev/hda3 - kubuntu using ReiserFs
/dev/hdb1 - Fedora Core 4 using ext3
/dev/hdb2 - Fedora Core 3 using ext3
/dev/hdb3 - Mandriva LE 2005 using ReiserFs
/dev/hdb4 - Xandros OCE 3 using ReiserFs

FC4 was the last linux distro installed. I am able to boot all the above except FC4. When I select FC4 to boot the booting process starts and then I get the following message

Checking Filesystems
fsck.ext3: bad Magic Number in superblock while opening /dev/hda3

repair filesystems...

on /dev/hda3 I have kubuntu installed using ReiserFS as the filesystem. Why does FC4 check the file systrem on /dev/hda3 when it is installed on /dev/hdb1? There is nothing wrong with the partition /dev/hda3 as when I select kubuntu it boots without any problems. Even Fedora Core 3, on partition /dev/hdb2, boots without any problems. Similarly I have no problems booting Mandriva LE2005 on partition /dev/hdb3, Xandors on /dev/hd4 and Windows XP home on /dev/hda2. I have tried both grub and LILO and I get the same problem with Fedora Core 4.

The grub config file (menus.lst) is as follows

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdb1
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=/dev/hdb1 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img

# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
# initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
title Windows XP Home
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
title Kubuntu 5.04, kernel 2.6.10
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hda3 ro acpi=on nomce vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
title Fedora Core 3 (2.6.11-1.14_FC3)
root (hd1,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.14_FC3 ro root=LABEL=/1 rhgb quiet acpi=on vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.14_FC3.img
title Mdk10.2 at hdb3, kernel 2.6.8
kernel (hd1,2)/boot/vmlinuz ro root=/dev/hdb3 acpi=on splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,2)/boot/initrd.img
title Xandros CE 3.0
rootnoverify (hd1,3)
chainloader +

Has anyone faced a similar problem and been able to fix it?

Further update on the file system check problem. I modified the FC4 fstab by mounting the partition on which I have installed FC4 after booting into one of the other partitions. I changed the following entry in the FC4 fstab

Label=/ / ext3 default 1 1
to
LABEL=/ / ext3 default 1 0

effectively disabling filesystem check. Then FC4 boots just fine like the other partitions I mentioned in my previous post.
So how can I prevent fsck from trying to open /dev/hda3 instead of /dev/hdb1 (whre FC4 is installed)?

Any update on this? I have exactly the same problem with slightly different configuration:

hda5 Ubuntu Reiserfs
hda6 Fedora Core ext3

During boot time ist tries to make a fsck.ext3 on hda5! Everything else similar, e.g. switching off the fsck make the system boot!


Regards
McBrain

I finally fixed it with a very simple fix. I changed my fstab to use

/dev/hdb1 / ext3 default 0 0

instead of
LABEl=/ / ext3 default 0 0

and used root=/dev/hdb1 in menu.lst as well. After the above changes FC4 boots just fine. Look at your fstab and menu.lst and make similar changes and it should work. Try using /deb/hda6 in fstab and menu.lst and see if it works.

Hi Mcbrain
I was wondering if your problem was resolved. In my previous post i wrote default 0 0. It should have been default 1 1. It was a typo.