Hi All

Is it possible to dual boot Fedora 3 and Xp Home Edition [with out
loading the grub boot loader] by using a boot Floppy or boot CD?

If you can.............................. is there a "how to" ?

Any and all help and assistance is appreciated


Thank You

Alf

Are we to assume you have a bootable XP system that you are afraid of trashing ???.

Warning, I haven't looked at FC *at all*.
But back in pre-history I installed Redhat 9 on this very laptop. RH used to ship with a utility that allowed you to create a Linux boot disk from Windoze - maybe RAWRITE ???.
Also from within Linux you could always DD the boot.img from the CD.
Presumably all this could be done in FC as well.

But, I gotta ask - Why ???.
GRUB in the MBR behaves very well with XP. If you don't like that you can always use the XP boot-loader. Gets messy with upgrades to the Linux side of things though.

You need to have a boot loader to boot linux. Windows uses one too, you just don't see it, its called "NTLDR"

But if you want to not install the Linux boot loader to the MBR you can install it to the root partition. Windows will always boot normally unless you use a floppy or cdrom disk to boot. You can use something like smart boot manager installed to a floppy or http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ to boot from, then you can use that to boot Linux.

Thats one wierd thing about Fedora, it doesn't prompt you to make a boot Floppy anymore like it used to.

Oh, and if you do put GRUB in the MBR and use that to boot windows and linux, you can always get rid of it. So if something messes up and you can't boot anything at all, you can put in the Windows install cd, go into Recovery Console, and do "fixmbr" and that will put the Windows boot loader back into the mbr.

Hi All

Thanks for the prompt imformative response to my post.

First I must appologize for the lack of computer information.
Frustration i quess.

Here's what I have
HP 521n - about 2 yrs old
2 Hard drives:
1st drive- 60GB Master - XP Home Edition
2nd drive 40GB Slave - Storage only
Complete set of Fedora 3 install disks [verified]

Here's what I have done:
Tried twice to install Fedora 3 on the Second drive. The install(s) seemed successful that is until i tried to boot to XP. At this point the Computer booted to system restore
leaving me with options of non destructive restore or complete restore. When i tried the system restore to see what would happen the computer booted back to Grub
in Fedora. Tried this several times with the same result.
It seemed to me I was stuck in "Gear".

I should stop at this point and say that from what little I know about Fedora [have some experience with knoppix] the Fedora install appeared to ready to go.....tried a few
things.......appeared to be okay.

Continuing - finally as the computer seemed stuck in this
"mode" I decided my only option was to do a full install.
Fortunately I have a set of HP restore disks for this model and used them to reinstall the O/S .

Hence my question about alternative procedures to install Fedora 3.

Yes I am concerned about "trashing" the system again,
hate that back to factory reintall .......start all over business.

I have a feeling there is something I should know at the boot prompt in Fedora [Grub] but it seemed at the time the only alternative I had was- "Win. XP". Quess there is more to learn.

Again sygoo and claudius sorry I was so vauge on the other post. I should know better

Thank You for the information and suggestions

regards
Alf

Yeah - ain't it a bitch ;-)

I've never installed any of the FC ships, but have a look at http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/
Talks about FC2, but makes for interesting reading.

Does HP put a hidden partition on your hard drive to keep the original programs and stuff it shiped with so you can do system restore? I kinda think it might. This may be the reason you get to that, maybe it is booting the wrong partition.

Can you give us the output when you do
then press p [enter] to print the partition table?

-Nathan

Not really sure why installing FC3 would cause WinXP to become so fouled that it wants to do a restore...I have installed FC3 and WinXP as dual boot OSes on two desktops and a Dell laptop without any of this difficulty, hmmmmmm...did you have WinXP's paging file on a separate partition that was deleted and overwritten by FC3 during the install?

This is because FC3 lists itself as the default OS to boot in your grub.conf...when it reboots grub should present you with a choice of OSes to boot, if you set up grub correctly during the initial install then WinXP should be one of your options. If not then try this before you wipe your disk and start from scratch : boot to FC3 and edit your grub.conf file, there are two ways to do this...by commands entered in a shell or using X...I'll talk you through using X.

- log on to start X and your favorite desktop manager as any user except root (I use KDE)
- click on the red hat on the toolbar (FC3's Start button...)
- browse to "System Settings", select "Bootloader"
- a popup dialogue will ask you for the root password, go ahead and enter it...
- another dialogue will appear asking you to "Please select the default entry for the system." Select the entry for your WinXP installation.
- note that you can also change the timeout in this dialogue as well! (how long grub waits before booting the default OS)
- select OK
- shutdown and reboot, your system should now boot to WinXP by default.

Alrighty, so I am guessing you had information on the second drive that windows was able to see? Maybe you even had the paging file located on that drive?

My suggestion would be to delete any partitions on the second drive from within Windows. From what you have described (and I am going out on a bit of a limb here), when you boot into Windows it cannot read the new linux partitions and realises there is a difference since Windows was last booted. Therefore, i think a logical assumption is that Windows is trying to restore the drive to previous working order (ie. No linux)

As for a solution to the problem, I am at a bit of a loss. I would definitely be using GRUB for any of my dual boot systems, but i have not put FC3 on a dual boot system with two physical drives. I currently run FC3 on my notebook on the same physical disk as Windows and have GRUB in the MBR. Works 100% all the time even after updates etc.

Good luck!

I had the same thing happen when I installed Fedora for the first time, because HP put a recovery partition (with a FAT32 format) on the first partition on the hard drive, although in Windows, it was marked as Drive D: The actual Windows partition (NTFS, of course) was the second one. So I just simply changed the entry in grub.conf, which said
to
and it worked fine.

Hi all: Wow what a response to my post.......thanks
You have all provided me with a great deal of information to digest.
I will try my best to respond , hopefully making a little sense as I go.
syg00
The links provided seem interesting....everything helps.

claudius753
HP and System Restore.......yes it is a hidden partion on the Hard Drive . Unfortunately I am unable to provide any info. about the previous install (s)of Fedora3.
At the time of the system restore of XP on the master HD, I formatted the second HD(wiped clean) and disabled the unit.
Partition table..... Going by memory I would have to say the partition table was correct at the time of Install. I remember NTFS as the location , I believe if the hidden partition was present it would
have shown as Fat32.I and I do not recall seeing an entryof that discription. But I could be mistaken.

armchair99
No XP system (paging file ) was in order at the time of install.I don't have to quess at that as the Master HD with Xp was just freshly reinstalled after the second disaster with Fedora 3.
In addition to this the Slave HD (slated for Fedora3) was wiped clean, formatted , single partition.Yes on the install I correctly set Grub with Fedora as default and WinXP the other . Of that I am sure.
Thank you for your step by step commands - editing grub.conf file. Now that might just be useful.

adriaanbw
:Thanks for the imput Nope: all drives were clean . As you can see from the above I had began all this Fedora business
with a fresh install of XP and the slave HD had just been formatted (wiped clean - single partition).Otherwise I would think you would be correct if I had a lot of stuuf on the second drive that would be a problem unless
properly partitioned and identified.Your point on Grub being in your MBR on Windows (I am guessing it's XP) with no problems is great glad it works for you.
I do not know what kind of Notebook you have but it seems to me that HP Pavilion computers do not like the MBR in their systems having company.....now that is just a quess....Going to find out.
---------------------------------------------------
drj:
A very interesting post something that has been touched on by other authors in this post. What you describe is an exact image of what happened to me, and it certainly makes sense but a little confusing
It is true that some Pavilions show the main drive As C: and D: with D containing the restore partion as you say with the
F 32 format but this computer is not one of them- C drive only with the CD writer as D and CD rom as E.As previously mentioned above I am sure on the Fedora install that the correct hard disk was correctly definied as HTFS
Having said that I will also say stanger things have happened. If it can happen to you then why not others. Very enlightening - thanks

Once again I thank one and all for the help and assistance-really very helpful.

Regards
Alf

drj000.....oops I should have said NTFS not HTFS....sorry


Regards
Alf