FC6 fresh install won't start from XP CD to install XP 2nd
 

HI

I'm trying to setup a dual boot FC6/Windows XP system on my home built PC (1.8GHz Pentium 4, 256 MB nVidia 5500 graphics card, 768 MB ram, master 60GB HD, slave 160GB HD) and I can only seem to get Windows OR FC6 to run after multiple install attempts. The issue I'm having now is FC6 is properly installed on the slave 160GB HD with GRUB on a small partition on the master disk and I want to install XP on the remainder of the master 60GB disk. However, when I try to startup from the XP install disc (via the normal root..."press any key to boot from CD" at startup) it starts to boot from the CD and says "Setup is inspecting your hardware..." as expected of the XP install CD, but then the screen just goes blank and the system will do nothing. To end this I actually have to manually switch off the PC. What is going wrong? Any help will be appreciated.

Most important is the end result I'm looking for: a dual boot FC6 and Windows XP system. I don't have anything on the drives at this point and am willing to start over with fresh installs of the OSs or modify my hardware settings (ie master & slave disks) if needed. Also, I must have the FC6 on the larger disk as it will be my primary OS on this computer (only need XP for some minor uses). Thanks in advance.

MSM

This Will Work
 

Fedora Core 6 Install

This by all means may not work for everybody.

I run an Intel D865perl motherboard with 2.6 gig Intel processor with 1 gig of ram. Two 250 gig
hard drives. The first hard drive is for Windows XP. Second hard drive is for Fedora and data
backups.

Drive 2 the first 40 gig is Fedora and the second 210 gig is for files backups and Norton ghost 2006
images. Which I never doing anything without a current image file it will save your butt.

Install Fedora Core 6 on the second hard drive and use the automatic partitioning tool but don't
put grub on your Master MBR put it on the first sector on your second drive. When you get to the
Boot Loader Configuration screen make sure you check the Configure advanced boot loader
options. The next screen will give the option where to put Grub Boot Loader. It should say like
hda or hdb. Hda is usually your XP Drive. From their finish loading. Put it on hdb.

Now duel booting using XP boot manager (My Preference. I don't like third party boot managers.)

Use your rescue CD to boot to Fedora.
Hit enter at the boot prompt.
Hit enter for English
Hit enter for us
Setup network select no
At the rescue screen select continue
At the next rescue screen hit enter
Now you have a prompt sh-3.00#
At the prompt type in chroot /mnt/sysimage
If hdb2 is Not your boot partition, change it as appropriate. Type: df then determine which hda#
Run the command dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1
You should see
1+0 records in
1+0 records out
Type ls and you should see a file named boot.lnx
Put a blank floppy disk in your a: drive
Type mcopy boot.lnx a:
It should have copied the file to your a: drive

Now reboot to Windows

Copy boot.lnx to your root directory
Right click on your boot.ini file select properties and uncheck read only click ok
Double click your boot.ini file and add one line at the end it should read
C:\boot.lnx="Fedora Core 6". Then save it. When you reboot your XP boot
manager will come up and you can chose Fedora it jumps to the Grub Boot manager on your
second drive.

My file looks like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)(1)\windows
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)(1)\windows="Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2"
/fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\boot.lnx="Fedora Core 6 Project"

You call it anything you want

Hi! Got exactly the same problem here. Installed core6 yesterday and wanted to recover my mbr using the Windows installation CD. It also starts and after showing "dedtecting hardware" the screen goes to blank, the harddisc is working a while and then nothing more. I installed the recovery mode to the harddisc end removed the grub bootloader with fixmbr, but the startingproblem remains. Only the installation CD. XP itself boots from harddisc without any problems.

I guess, there went something wrong with the partitiontable or partition ids while anaconda is writing the new table. It's definitly not the hardware, I've checked everything (cable, controller etc.).

I found some similar messages about this problem on the web but no fix yet. This eve I'm gonna try to get it to work again without lowlevelformating my disc. Hopefully I'll find the solution for this odd problem.


Pierre