Hey people. Ok ive googled this thing till i cant google no more so i thought id ask for help here...

Just installed FC3 and everything went well until the reboot bit

First the installation hanged at Grub Loading Stage 2... Oh dear ......

I dont have access to another computer so i put the windows xp cd in and recoverd access to xp using fixmbr, bootcfg /reconfig (or summin along those lines) Now i got access to xp... and I know fedora is installed on the partition. (i can see everything using an exf2 file explorer in windows)

Tried using a differnent bootloader thinking maybe a problem with Grub. However although it displays the linux partition selecting it just hangs with a nice blank screen to look at....

Running Windows Xp Pro.. hda1
WantingToRun Fedora Core 3 hda2
Stuffpartion hda3
Swap partition hda4...

Any help appreciated


P.S i didnt install a different /boot partition. Will do this if it fixes things tho.. Wanna make sure before i mess about installing it all again.

If you have either a Win XP or a FC3 rescue CD, you are in no trouble at all

Just put in the FC3 CD (presuming you have one) and follow the instructions. This will get you into single mode (text console).

Once there type :

grub or /sbin/grub and this will get you into your grb console (example: grub> )

Once in there, type:

root (hd0,1)
--> where hd0 is your primary harddisk, presuming you have your boot partition on your primary harddisk, if you have a boot partition, else use the / partition. The 1 is used to identify your boot partition if you have one, else use the / partition. Keep in mind that partitions start with 0, so presuming Win XP is on hd0,0 = C One more thing. As other shells, this one supports auto completion using the TAB key, so use it, to see what options the commands use, and also to see what partitions and harddisks you have.

you can see your partition table using fdisk -l
try to identify your boot partition if you have one, else use the / partition.

The output of root (hd0,1) will be a description of the filesystem it has selected.

Now run

setup(hd0), presuming this is where you want to install grub. This will install it to the MBR, thus giving you the GRUB boot loader.

This will output some lines, which you check for errors. there shouldn't be any.

Now you're done. Type quit, to get out of grub shell, and reboot, using the command reboot.

Now you should see the GRUB bootloader, from wheere you can select what OS you want to start.

Ok presuming you don't have a FC3 rescue disk. No problem, as long as you have your XP CD. Put it in and start the recovery console of it. Once there, you will be prompted for the administrators password. You will be dropped into console mode, similar to linux, just a C:>

Here execute the command fixmbr, which will wipe out GRUB from the MBR, thus giving you free way to your Win XP, without showing you that Linux is still on your computer. Once in Win XP, download the FC3 rescue CD and burn it, and then follow the upper instructions.

Good luck!

Just a description of the error you are having:

Grub is installed on your computer, as you can see Grub Loading stage 2....

However it seems it cannot find it's files. Maybe you changed something to alter the partition table, in which case, this usually happens. Think what did you do, to not do it again next time.

If you have a spare drive, try installing FC3 on its own drive. Linux can live in harmony with windows on the same drive, but not the other way around. Last time I had windows & linux on the same drive, windows suffered a complete filesystem meltdown and while terminating itself, did what most consider impossible, and physically damaged the linux filesystem which was on its own partition. Linux was able to repair most of itself (some files were lost), but windows was a total loss. since then I keep several drives handy and only run any particular OS on its own drive.

What you're trying to do is possible though. Use Grub. If you continue to have problems, try another distribution like FC2 or FC1 instead of FC3.

FC3 is bleeding edge software and may not perform as expected on newer or oddball hardware.

Thanks for your replys Going to try the rescue cd out now...

Cant use two harddrives as i use a shuttle system and there simply isnt room.... Ive ihad redhat9 installed on here no problem duel booting with xp , didnt expect such issues with fedora but never mind. Wish my luck il report back here with success/failure..

Well here i am using good old firefox in fedora

Got a few problems with display settings and stuff but nothing i shouldnt be able to work out Thanks for your helps people.

Glad to see you made it work. Could you post what steps made it work? Just for future people with the same problem

Ok heres what i did...

Inserted windows xp cd...
Enterd Recovery Console
Rand fixmbr,fixboot,bootcfg /reconfig
Rebooted.
Enterd Windows Xp downloaded Fedora core 3 rescue cd.
# Not sure this bit is entirley necessary but this is how its working so im adding it

installed a programme called bootpart.
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
added a linux boot option using bootpart to boot.ini

#
Ran fedora rescue cd.
chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub
root (hd0,1)
setup(hd0)
rebooted.
Fedora Loaded.

Things i found intresting..... X did not configure properly straight away. First start i had to run X86Config again... and it only gave me the option of booting to 800 * 600.
Upon a second reboot it seemed to fix it self and using the KDEControll Center i was able to change the resolution to what ever i pleased.
Upon a third reboot the Fedora Finalising Setup kicked in (strange i know as id already been in the windows manger????) This messed up the settings for my display and caused my card to go out of range for my monitor...
Upon a fourth reboot everything worked fine.... Just running all the updates now before i try and play any more..

I'm having the same issue. Whenever I reboot my system it says:

GRUB loading stage 1.5

GRUB loading, please wait...

And then *poof* it reboots. Over, and over, and over.....You get the gist of it.

My setup is as follows:

Athlon 64 3000+
Asus K8N-E Deluxe
hda1 = Windows
hda5 = NTFS
hdb1 = Fedora Installation (ext3)
hdb2 = Linux Swap
hdb5 = NTFS

My grub.conf looks like this:

default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boob/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows XP SP2
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

From what I can see, it SHOULD work. Just to be sure I tried reinstalling it.

grub> root (hd1,0)
root (hd1,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 16 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) d (hd0)1+16 p (hd1,0)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done

As far as I can tell I did everything right, but still, same thing.

Just for fun I also tried

grub> find grub.conf
find grub.conf

Error 15: File not found

Which I thought was wierd, but whatever.

I also tried installing to a floppy, but I got a message saying device does not exists or something like that. The syntax I used is

grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (fd0)

I'm stuck. I'd really like to get this up and running, any help would be much appreciated.

Try to reinstall it to the MBR with the /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda command.

I'll be....it worked.....but why? What did I miss?

One more question. Grub comes up and says "booting to Windows XP SP2 in..." and a countdown, and says "press any key for menu." How do I get it to skip that, go to the menu, and do the countdown there? I have a hunch it's the "hiddenmenu" line in the grub.conf, but I don't want to delete it in case I break something.

What hidden line in the grub.conf? Can you post your grub conf file here? Let's see what is wrong with it

Oh P.S.:

What you missed. Here is how grub works. the commands you made were from the grub command line. You changed root to (hd1,0) with root(hd1,0), which is the first partition on your second harddrive. Being /boot or /root in your case. Once you chrooted, you did a setup(hd0), which tells grub in the MBR, where his files are, so that he can load them at boot.

The grub-install /dev/hda command installs GRUB (if it was corrupted somehow, this works, from rescue mode, if you install windows after linux, and thus delete grub from the MBR, which windows does by default ) For the future, if you install windows after linux, this is what you have to do, to get grub back on your boot. Also if Grub get's corrupted, for some reason, reinstall it by these two steps, first pointing it to it's files, and then installing it to the MBR. Hope this explains it...

default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu <-------- This is the line I mean.
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1667 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boob/initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Windows XP SP2
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

I got problems for not spreading the lines, meaning that, between both titles, put one line empty, like this:

title=redhat
kernel ....
initrd........

title=Win XP
chainloader....

It worked well for me then. You can probably remove the hiddenmenu line

Your intuition was rite. If you delete the hiddenmenu command in grub.conf, you no longer have to hit enter or esc to get the menu up. Next step for me, viewing the countdown in the menu.

I guess the timeout is displayed as long as you don't push anything. Isn't it fun being a somewhat newbie to linux? Hehehe.