does Fedora Core 3 not dual boot problem?

Dear Sir/Madam:

I installed XP to my PC first, then Fedora Core 2, however, when rebooting the PC, it only can boot from Fedora Core 2 and cannot boot from XP anymore.

It was said that there was a well-known bug in Fedora Core 2 to cause this problem.

Has anyone use the Fedora Core 3? Does it get the same problem or not? If Fedora Core 3 hasn't got this problem, then I will try to install Fedora Core 3 instead of 2.

Thanks and regards!
David

There is a bios setting you can switch that will probably make your winXP bootable again.
I forget what it is called. I think LBA. If it is set to auto then you have to change it to manual - though I forget what manual setting it needs to be at.

I'd also like to know if this has been resolved in Core 3 or if I need to try to find a comprehensive explanation of the solution. (read: I've read plenty of explanations of the cause and several attempts at a solution)...does anyone have any easy [1->2->3] guides to work around this severe bug? (If so, submit it to the developers!)

Mike

This has nothing to do with the distribution .. its the kernel .. disagreement between the OSes on how to threat CHS on the HD .. the safest is to change the HD mode in your BIOS to LBA instead of CHS or Auto.

I think just typing
sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda
will get the job done, but better read the whole article:
http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/

Anyway, i don't know if they fixed this in FC3, but there is a simple way to prevent this from happening
during the installation.

I just installed FC2 today but i was aware of the problem and how to prevent this from happening.

read the article!!!

Easy Dual boot for fedora 2:

The question was:
Is there a 1-2-3 step solution to the dual boot problem
(I hope it's solved with FC3, anyway, the proposed method will work for FC3 as well I guess).
The answer is: yes there is:

This method is to use when *installing" FCx, not when one has installed it and got troubles, in that case you better take a look at http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg00908.html

Method:

1/ use a live-cd (knoppix will do)
2/ become superuser
3/ and perform for every hard-disk hdx the following:
/sbin/sfdisk -l /dev/hdx
note the chs-values (cylinder/heads/sector)
in a normal system, heads/sector = 255/63
4/ install FC2 (or FC3) an type at the install prompt:
linux hdx=c,h,s

e.g. if hda had a chs of 9729/255/63 and hdb one of
3737/255/63, and your CDRW 'resides' on hdd, your
install prompt should read:
linux hda=9729,255,63 hdb=3737,255,63 hdd=ide-cd

This should do the job. During install, you're asked to specifiy boot parameters, add again the values mentioned above (normally only hdd=ide-cd will appear again). These values should also appear in your grub.conf or lilo.conf

Enjoy
(credits go to http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedor.../msg02114.html)

qbsu21th,

Be warned that I am a perpetual noob and not a programmer. But....

I had installed FC2 on my laptop the day it came out before I knew about the dual boot problem and the partition was a little off but it booted and I left it that way for the duration. While it was messed up, if I booted from the Partition Magic disk it could not manage to read the mess that had been created.

I recently did a restore of the Windows and left room for the upcoming FC3. Following the method needed for FC2 I prepared by getting the (cylinder/heads/sector) information for my laptop's hard drive. I used fdisk, PM and even a Maxtor disk utility to see if they all agreed. The hard drive manufacturer does not have this info anywhere that I could find it nor any disk utilities available to the public!

Before I installed FC3 I became curious and just did a default install. It worked with none of the previous problems. Partition Magic boots and works so I suppose the problem is gone. Also from fdisk

.

fdisk -l /dev/hda Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 2167 17406396 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 2168 2422 2048287+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hda3 2423 2435 104422+ 83 Linux /dev/hda4 2436 4864 19510942+ 5 Extended /dev/hda5 2436 4864 19510911 8e Linux LVM

you may notice that each partition stops at one cylinder and the next partition starts at the next one. eg 2167->2168. When I had the problematic FC2 install not all transitions were sequential.

I don't know if this means that the problem is gone or not, only that there is no evidence of it on my fresh default WinXP-FC3 dual boot install.

I do think it is sort of funny that I couldn't find any information about whether or not this problem still exists with FC3.

Cheers.

Well

Looking at your partition table and your CHS values, I guess you've no problem. A FC2 messing up the geomtery of your harddisk changes the HS values defintely in that they no longer equal 255/63.

So I guess that everything is right and that the bug causing the change in disk geometry is removed from FC3

OK, enjoy FC3 (and if necessary XP ;-))

Dear Flysideways:

thanks for the information. as you mentioned in your reply that you installed linux to your laptop, so i get the following questions for you. it will be very appreciated if you can give me some guidance.

I want to buy a laptop computer. the following lists the ability of the laptop PC I want. I will be very appreciated if someone can give me some guidance.

1. support window and Linux OS, such as, win98/NT/XP and Redhat/Mandrake/Suse/Debian/Fedora.

2. support wifi, bluetooth, wireless internet

3. can run J2EE, Oracle, C/C++

that are all i need. so, can you tell me the following as well?

1. what brand of laptop i should buy? dell, hp, ibm, toshiba or ...

2. how much the laptop i require cost? i'm afraid of it should be very expensive.

3. how can i do some research/investigation for the laptop i need?

thanks and regards!
D.

Hey everyone. I hope I can latch on to this thread with a similar question. Is this the dualboot issue you are talking about? When I reboot after installation the grub loader pops up. I can select Fedora Core 3 and it works great, but when I select Windows XP it goes to a black screen that has

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

and hangs. I'm having this exact problem. When I go to the XP CD and run FIXMBR, I get an error on reboot saying that there was an error loading the operating system. If I use the Fedora Rescue CD and reinstall Grub, I get the black screen with the rootnoverify messege again.

I'm just trying to see if this is the problem that you are speaking of. If so, uh,...its not fixed yet, but I'm open to a work around.

Hello ghight,


Yes and no ;-)

The dual boot problem with FC2(/FC3 ?) concerns the fact that during a FC2 install your disk geometry can be changed (a change in the CHS values), which can be corrected for by selecting LBA access to the disks in your BIOS, or if not possible or not desired, by rechanging your CHS values (see link in one of my previous post to the excellent explication of Radu Cornea and
Alexandre Oliva on how to do that exactly).

Besides that, you have the problem of correct configuring your grub, i.e. indicating the right partition of your Win XP/2K system (system disk, not just NTFS partitions).

If this Win System resides on the y-th partition of disk x,
then your grub should read:

rootnoverify(hdx, y-1) // first partition has number 0
chainloader +1

This normally should start the windows boot.
If nothing happens, this is probably due to a shift in the CHS values (that is at least my experience. I got once the correct grub, but Win failed to start. The work around as proposed by Cornea & Oliva brought Windows again up & running). I guess that this CHS-change causes your XP-rescue to complain ...

Hope this helps,
UltraKnorrie

Changing the BIOS to LBA instantly fixed my problem. I'm curious why this issue has been the same since FC2 but it did not happen for me until I used FC3. FC2 loaded just fine! Strange.

When I go to the XP CD and run FIXMBR, I get an error on reboot saying that there was an error loading the operating system.

Was it more specific about what the error was? After running fixmbr it should not have a problem booting.

rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1

That's what my grub says for Win on hda1.


OOps. I type too slowly. You posted before I did. Glad to hear that it works.

The sfdisk trick worked for me...I got Windows back...then I booted to FC3 and found that Linux is dead. It thinks my LVM2 (or whatever) is completely full and will only log in as root. I'll have to run Knoppix again (as sfdisk doesn't seem to be installed by default in FC3 even with the 'developer' option) and copy a screen shot of my partition table to my fat32 drive for examination.

Mike

Yes, I experienced the FC2 problem where XP wouldn't boot anymore.

I found the solution here and that solved the problem.


Now I've installed FC3 (final build) and wish I hadn't decided to use my only laptop. FC3 has an even worse problem. Not only will WinXP not boot, but neither will FC3 because I can't even get the Grub splash screen menu to show up. It displays the BIOS, then reboots, then displays the BIOS, then reboots, ... ad infinitum.

This lead me to log this bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=139467

Currently my Dell 8600 inspiron is a paperweight.