There's no problem with the ubuntu boot manager on a floppy disk detecting all partitions created on the two
different drives installed in the case. Upon using the Western Digital "DLG.EXE" utility found on LifeGuard's
floppy disk, the original boot record was restored allowing the XP primary to boot normal again. Upon setting
up 98 on the secondary with a 5gb primary, a separate Fat16 or Linux created partition can be used to store
the "/" information you have described can be put to use. The purpose of having 98 on the secondary is first
to create a familiar ms dos environment that can also access the XP drive once the Grub loader is properly
installed to the secondary drive alone. 98 will use the NT4Dos utilty to read and copy the Linux materials on
the XP primary. The XP primary will be isolated only when the initial Grub loader is installed on the second
drive for working with the various Linux distros and the 98 primary partition. XP will not be a part of the
multiboot process. This is why ubuntu's boot manager was chosen due to being able to detect partitions on the
two drives without interfering with the installed MBR or Grub losder. It simply loads the partition chosen.

The Fedora distros downloaded could not be accessed despite the successful installation along side with the
98 installation on the primary parition of the second drive. This drive is designated for Linux to work along
with 98 and more importantly MS Dos. The Linux distros that can be installed directly to the drive itself is
the thing being considered here for this project. You are quite familiar with 98 and Linux being able to run on the same drive together without issues. Since Windows 3.1 runs even better then 98 due to the size of the
installed memory a Fat16 2gb primary would be considered there for a separate "/" partition. 98 could then be
installed to a second extended partiton due to it's Fat32 availability for newer Linux Distros as well as the
use of the NT4Dos utilties to access the XP drive when files stored there are needed. Linux has it's own type
of utilities for accessing ntfs type partitions. Fat16 would support the older distros. The Grub4Dos floppy
could then be used to load Win31, 98SE, Linux? Ubuntu allows booting either drive without changing any of the
current bios setting by a simple boot from the floppy drive. Will it be able to load numbers of Linux distros
along with 98? Or will the Grub4Dos floppy need to be booted from? These are the current dilemnas since the
XP drive can easily be loaded without a Grub loader using the ubuntu floppy that detects partitions not OSs.

The XP drive has to be isolated from the secondary due to be being configured into a network with protocals
there. But XP can be added to the secondary to multiboot Linux and 98SE at a later point. Grub4Dos can only
be installed when the primary XP drive is disconnected to prevent changes there. The Grub loader is being put
onto the secondary for use with multiple OS installations there without inferring with the Primary drive. This
is the situation where no changes can be made to the XP drive. The ubuntu boot manager simply loads from the
partition chosen regardless of the OS inatalled. This is the circumtance to consider. A second Fat32 primary
is also an option since it can support both 98 and the newer Linux distros without effecting the XP drive. Is
ubuntu's boot manager or Grub4Dos the best way to select what OS to load without Grub on the XP drive?

You are pretty insistent on your own way of thinking but you should take note the following

(1) A boot loader always boot a partition! More accurately its boots to a pre-determined location of the partition where the system resides.
(2) Ubuntu uses Grub and so its boot manager is just another Grub!
(3) Grub4Dos is another Grub again. You simply use it inside a Dos partition.
(4) The heart of your multi booting project is to use one Grub to control every system. It can't do this job unless you put it in the MBR of the first bootable disk. Putting Grub in the second disk serves no purpose because the BIOS only reads the MBR of the first boot disk and never the other.
(5) You can boot XP while it is a sceond disk, using Grub's map statement. If XP was installed as a master disk it will be known as (hd0) to Grub as it counts from 0. When XP disk becomes a secondary drive it is known as (hd1) to Grub. These two map statements instruct the Bios to reverse their order during booting.
[code]map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
Therefore please stop worry the position of XP, Win9x etc because you can get Grub to re-arrange everything. If a partition is infront of XP you can hide it so Xp is always booted to a "C" drive.

If you look at the link you will find that I have

Disk 1 : Dos 6.22 in hda1
Disk 2 : Dos 7.10 in hdc1, Win98 in hdc2
Disk 3 : XP pro in sda1
Disk 4 : Win2k in sdb1, Freedos in sdb2.

The full Grub commands can be seen from the menu table. I am not bragging but just point you to the relevant parts that you need to know and understand.

I suggest you to study the link as it teaches you how to get inside your Fedora. A few readers have reported back to me my suggested manual booting has taught them a lot. I think you can benefitted in doing the same because you are pretty confused with some of the basic issues.

What had originally happened was that the second drive with 98 and Core 4 was set to boot up in the bios. A
command of hide (hd1,0) effected the XP drive after Fedora had installed the Legacy Grub loader. But that was
not seen after 98 was hidden and Core 4 loaded up to the user name and password. Upon reboot of the system on
finding this out that Core 4 needed something else, Perhaps an assigned account with Red Hat?, neither 98 or
XP could be unhidden. The XP drive appeared as an unknown when later overwriting 98 with XP in order to have
access again to the primary. Unpon eventually performing an install to repair the three base dos files were
eventually removed. With the WD dlg.exe mbr backup/restore utility the drive is now bootable on it's own. At
this point it is not multibooting XP with the other OSs. It is how to multiboot 98 with Linux when the bios
is set to load the secondary drive where the choice of OSs can be made.

XP will remain the system default drive. The idea is to keep the main drive from being effected by mishaps
that could occur while getting familiarized with Linux. The idea behind the selector is to prevent any spread
of pc virus or spyware from one drive to the other. The ubuntu boot manager essentially performed identically
on the same concept without installing anything to the XP drive. At this time ubuntu will be the first to go
onto the second drive with the reinstallation of 98. XP was removed from the secondary. A Linux based utility
will reduce the current 48.9gb primary that fdisk made for 98 down to about 30gb which will allow enough room
for backing up Linux files. 98 is the go between but is no longer supported by the installed hardware. It is
primarily a means of duplicating and storing Linux files as well as running old dos apps. XP eventually may
see a small partition or simply create a small ntfs partition at the end of the second drive. That will store
things for both XP and Linux in the event either drive's primary partition is damaged by something.

It will take some time to get the basics down on Linux commands. Having been familiar to a greater degree of
using dos commands when 3.1 was the primary OS, the references you have posted are being noted. Attention is
being paid to the posts on this thread. But at the present the "learning process" on the second drive has to
be kept separate of the main drive to avoid any disaster there. When a spare case is available, the reference
to the posts here can easily be applied without concern for the main drive which is in regular use daily. A
look at ubuntu seemed to offer more then Knoppix as far as installing direct to the hard drive. The live cds
are more for practice. Well they do say practice makes...??? We'll see about that soon enough. Hopefully the
answer to what is needed for Fedora to run is not restricted to commercial sales where the password and user
name have to be registared just like MS products with an assigned key code. Your link for free versions has
potential and is greatly appreciated.

UPDATE: 98SE and Core reinstallation. Updated fdisk claimed 114gb while only showing 48.9gb primary partition
on second drive. Grub4Dos now at "A:>" asking for "Command Interpreter: "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM". The command
for setting up user name and password at prompt? Enter "usernameadd" at user name prompt. Enter "passwd" at
the password prompt. This is for creating new user account according to advice given at another forum. Is the
instruction here correct? How to exit Grub4Dos to re-enter correction is now sought to multiboot Core 4 with
98SE as the "Presizer.exe" brought fdisk's goof down from 114gb to 3.2gb for 98SE. 98 still runs with under
1gb of free space on (hd0,0).

Advice (1)

Stop using Dos's fdisk. Use the Linux fdisk and cfdisk instead. You only get confused with Dos because it can't support large disks and Linux partitions.

Advice (2)

Use Grub4Dos only after you have all the systems installed and want to boot them with this software. In using it you have to transfer the control from Dos to a Grub. If there isn't a workable Grub the system will hang.

Advice (3)

Follow my recommendation of setting up your system as laid down in Post #15. The reason is very simple. As you keep adding systems to the PC you need a boot loader to multi boot them. Therefore you must have a Grub operational first.

In a nutshell if you have 10 systems of Dos or Windows and you want to boot the 10th system you need to hide the first 9 by Grub's "hide" command.

If the the 10th system was originally installed in a master disk or (hd0) and subsequently moved to disk 4 or (hd3) you can alter the disk order by Grub's "map" statement so that the 10th system can inherit the master disk status again temporarily before it is booted. Therefore you can keep installing more systems without bothering the inferences because Grub can take care of all these problems for you. Without a working Grub you can go nowhere.

Have you managed to to get Fedora up and running yet. If you haven't here is how you overide the password system using a Live CD. My instruction is for Fedora's root partition in hdb2 so change it to suit your case.

Boot up a Live CD, just any one will do. You make a directory in /mnt, mount your Fedora partition (assumed hdb2), on it, change root to Fedora, change the root password to "password1", add a new user "newcomerA" to it and enter the user's password "password2".
you enter password1 twice
you enter passwd2 twice for user newcomerA
exit the Fedora

In subsequent booting to it you can log in either as root or newcomerA.

The intention here saikee is to have the XP primary remain as a stand alone boot device without Grub being
installed as the loader there. The concept is to be able to switch to the secondary without entering the bios
tp change the boot order without making changes to the primary drive. The Fedora loader wasn't installed this
time to avoid the original lock that occurred when Grub hid both the XP primary and the 98 first partition in
order to load. Upon restart of the system the manual prompt for unhiding both XP and 98 wasn't seen. The use
of WD's own backup/restore mbr utility had to used to get the primary accessible again.

Cfisk.exe still hasn't been located for download. After the reformat and reinstall of 98 with the XP primary
drive disconnected MS's own updated fdisk stated 48.9gb while creating one 114gb partition. Presizer worked in reducing the 98 partition to 3.2gb where Fedora could then be used to create the three other initial Linux
partitions with one used as a 1.5gb swap and Core 4's home on a 10gb. The "/" designation to the 98 primary
would not go on due to being an MS not Linux partition. With ubuntu's boot manager failing to load Core 4, a
use of Grub4Dos was then tried. This is where the 98 partition was hidden but failed to load Core 4. The "A:"
prompt is where Grub ended up looking for the "(e.g. "C:\WINDOWS\COMMAND.COM") command interpreter. The tries
at writing to the second drive with a live cd failed.

The purpose here is to create a custom install to the second drive. In order to create the account by those
instructions you have provided the "A:" hangup has to be solved where the io.sys edit can be made later. One
instruction for getting Grub loaded at post was located by this type of edit to preload Grub before Windows.
Once the real mode dos can be recovered Grub4Dos can be properly configured for 98 and Linux. The main issue
seen with Core 4, however, was a requirement for "it's own" "/" instead of adjusting the 98 mbr. That is what
saw the first installation load Fedora when it's own loader was used. The other versions of Linux will go on after the 98 partition can be unhidden to repair the installation there.

I am going to give up because you driving me round the bend.

I have shown you various ways to get over the problem but you didn't follow them but keep telling me the same problem. There has been no progress made since I entered the thread.

If you don't want the MBR written on your XP. That is fine. Put it in as the slave. Put the previous slave to become master, install Fedora and put Grub in the MBR.

You don't realise that you need a Grub in the MBR to control the multi booting and you control Grub by editing its /boot/grub.menu.lst. The /boot/grub/menu.lst can only come from a Linux. (You can install Dos 7.10 to a get a copy of Grub but it won't work for you because in booting XP you need to hide Dos and lose access to Grub).

Until you have Fedora you will just keep talking and worrying because nothing can be done as you have no boot loader to multi boot.

Grub does not offer hiding or unhiding to you. You have to edit its /boot/grub/menu.lst to make it do it. All the instructions are in the Grub Manual but we could give assistance if needed.

YOU'VE OBVIOUSLY MISSED THE POINT! The idea here is to have the XP isolated from any goobers while learning
the "ropes" involved with Linux. Whenever learning the structure of any OS you still have to have a working
drive in the system. The XP drive is the essential while the second drive can be redone at anytime due to any
serious goofs made. This is also why the concept of having a drive selector is mentioned earlier during the
discussion. The multiboot of XP added to the tail end of the second is also under consideration allowing for
an extra ntfs partition for storing data on a temporary basis. The Grub loader could then be configured for
that OS when the time for it was decided.

At this point 98SE was redone on a 2gb Fat16 partition to allow XP added later(possibly) to coexist with 98
and Linux on the same drive. Fedora's version of Grub did previously and unexpectedly install to the XP drive
where it made the drive unbootable after hiding that along with the 98 partition. Fortunately the mbr was on
the WD utility disk to save the volume of regularly accessed files and data. There was no edit only a command
entered at the Grub prompt that hid both the XP primary on the first drive and the 98 primary on the second
when the "hide (hd1,0)" was mistakenly entered on the first run making the XP drive inactive. When the entry
of (hide (hd0,0) was later entered 98 was then hidden. This mistake was made when the initial tries at Linux
commands showed the XP drive as (hd0,0) with the second 98 as (hd1,0). With the bios set to boot the second,
98 became the exact opposite. If was just XP and 98 the ubuntu boot manager would solve that fast by simply
choosing the detected partitions while booting from floppy and never making changes in the bios.

Are you concerned about a different concept? Unless a sound driver for 98 can be found for an Audigy 4 Pro,
XP may replace 98 on the second drive's primary Fat16 partition. A drive selector would make either drive a
master on the primary without physically swapping locations in the case itself. That would electrically be a
means of having two separate primary eide cables on one board. There would no need to change boot orders in
the bios itself with that type of setup and allow Grub to write freely to the mbr on the then first 98 drive.
Eventually the XP primary may be installed in a new case if not two 400gb SATA drives where a familiarity in
the Linux commands and distros would allow a totally different picture. If Core 4 can not be loaded by the
Grub4Dos loader it will be replaced by ubuntu or other Linux distros as more are added. Fedora did offer a
more user friendly GUI for learning and was a Red Hat type distro. But it's own Grub did not reappear upon a
restart to unhide the other two OSs. How do you edit a /boot/grub/menu.lst without a grub prompt?

I did not miss the point.

I have shown you how to maka bootable Grub floppy that can boot any system including of course XP. You can have 100 systems there and use the Grub floppy to boot up each one individually and learn the rope this way but still have your XP safe untouched like a virgin.

You can go on playing with your hardware selector but one lousy Grub floppy is all I need to boot any of my 100+ systems.

This thread shows how one can run 3 XP with 16 Linux with all the hiding, unhiding and map statements.

In using a Grub prompt to boot you are effectively typing the essential statements in /boot/grub/menu.lst line by line.

At Grub prompt you can hide a partition (hd0,0) by
The first and second geometry statements tell you the partition status before and after your hiding instruction.

Type "help" at Grub prompt if you want to know the commands available and do read the Grub Manual.

You edit a /boot/grub/menu.lst while you are inside that Linux. If the Linux is not bootable you boot to a Live CD, make a temporary directory and mount the unbootable Linux partition as part of the filing system of Live CD LInux to access it.

sounds like you need to clear yer Mbr by running
fdisk /mbr first then install FC4 im guessing

The initial problem was corrected finally where Fedora threw it's own Grub on the primary. That was the big
one to start with where the primary mbr was effected making it inactive. A third reinstallation of XP finally
corrected that mess. That was after the fixboot and fixmbr commands wouldn't allow Windows to go past a black
screen on bootup. The glitch with the boot.ini file asking to choose either "default=" or "C:\Windows\" was a
nuisance when the default would lock the system if you couldn't use the arrow key fast enough. The reinstall
to repair created that. And the second which deleted the Windows directory also failed. So the third was the
ticket with the fix commands given ahead of time.

XP now sees a "G:" drive indicating that the second install of Core 4 successfully partitioned and formatted
the swap, root, and home for itself without the Legacy loader installed. Ubuntu will be the next added. What
is needed now is to know how to make up the boot floppy from dos on while on the 98 drive. The fresh download
of Grub4dos was unpacked with slightly over 5mb seen. Which files go on the floppy along with what ones are
copied to the secondary hard dirve's root are now the focus. Doe Grub.exe run from the boot floppy while the
"GRLR" and "GRLDR.MBR" get copied to the root? Those would be used if XP was installed at the backend of the
secondary since those are for ntfs partitions. While ubuntu is installed the primary will again be unplugged.
The reinstallation of 98 went well since Presizer was used to reduce the batched fdisk update that made the
entire secondary one partition. But it was compressed and unusable. The live cds failed to list either drive
when tried. That could have also been from the lack of a working knowledge of Linux commands.

Once the boot floppy is made for Grub4dos the attempt can be made to run Core 4 since no change will be made to the 98 mbr at that point. If that fails there, Core 4 may have to be reinstalled due to a repartitioning and reformating done with 98's primary. Fedora's grub wasn't installed. According to the Linux manual there the config.sys can be edited to autoload Grub4Dos which says:

"GRUB [ --config-file=FILE ]
The FILE, for example, can be (hd0,0)/boot/grub/menu.lst
In CONFIG.SYS, the line looks like:
install=c:\some\where\grub.exe --config-file=FILE
If no options present, GRUB.EXE simply uses
(hd0,0)/boot/grub/menu.lst
as the configure file, if it exists.
The partition (hd0,0) can be a Windows partition or a Linux
partition, or any other partition type supported by GRUB.

Update: FILE can be the contents of a menu. Use semi-colon
to delimitate the embedded commands here in FILE. The FILE
can be enclosed with a pair of double-quotes. For example:
GRUB --config-file="root (hd0,0);chainloader +1"
This command will boot the system in (hd0,0)."

The problem with Fedora's Grub was that there was no Grub prompt after Core 4 initially ran. Grub4Dos offers
a prompt since it would be run in dos only. The idea is to have a prompt at every boot to insure the ability
to hide or unhide any partition. Booting from a floppy presents no issues here since dos is old school. But
Linux is new school especially when you do not have a distro running to edit a "/boot/grub/menu.lst". Now to
get a working boot floppy so dos can be used for this.

I am going to end up with a high blood pressure for keeping repeating myself the same advices ignored by you for solving problems you keep asking.

Advice (2) of Post #20 tells you to use Grub4Dos only after the systems been installed. Grub4Dos pass the control to Grub. If you haven't got a workable Grub available what good is having Grub4Dos?

To use Grub4Dos is dead simple. I wrote a batch file nameed as boot.bat with the following line inside
Thus if I have Fedora installed, say in hda3 then in Grub term it would be (hd0,2). I can boot up Fedora's Grub while in a Dos partition with Grub4dos by issuing this command
It is a piece of a cake if you have Grub to boot to.

Item (3) of Post #7 asks you to make a bootable Grub floppy, even by giving out a full set of instructions, but you are not interested.

Now you want a prompt that can enable you to hide and unhide partitions. The Grub floppy can give you the exact things you are asking now.

I wrote in red in post #7 that the floppy can boot any PC system but still it falls on deaf ears.

What should I do? hang myself?

"Item (3) of Post #7 asks you to make a bootable Grub floppy, even by giving out a full set of instructions, but you are not interested." failed to see results! with the effort to enter those cammands entered with the
ubuntu Live cd's "terminal" interface. "Path before expression" was seen along with "failed to find file". A
subsequent instruct states: "find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]". Ubuntu Live cd also fails to access
ANY installed drive on the system regardless of type tried. It operates in a "virtual" not literal desktop.

There are presently two hard drives installed on one system. The XP single primary is the host drive for a
small network where the mbr has to remain uneffected while on the same system. That is why this has to be a
"custom installation" in order to get familiar with Fedora as well as other distros of Linux. Ubuntu's own
boot manager floppy readily detects the Fedora partitions that include a 1gb root, 2gb swap for additional
distros added as well, and the 10gb home partition to allow for downloads, files saved, etc..
It will even load load XP or 98 on either drive. But it will not load Core 4.

I have no interest in the Live version of Ubuntu CD, so no copy of it and cannot verify your account.

It is possible that Ubnuntu, thinking there is no installation needed, may have withdrawn Grub which is its standard boot loader. It is unusual as Ubuntu need to rescuse GRub if it is in trouble. You can try to see if you can invoke a Grub sheel while inside Ubuntu by
Alternatively you may not realise Ubuntu operates a security system whereby all system-related commands require root privileges to operate but root login is denied. Thus if you want to use system-related commands in terminal mode of Ubnuntu you need to add "sudo" before the command to signify being a super user. For example to mount a partition hda1 in Ubuntnu would be
It is fundamental for any Live CD to mount a partition and I am sure you can do it in Unbuntu, otherwise the CD serves no purpose.

If you have a need to keep your XP MBR untouch like a virgin have a look at this thread.

To diagnose why your FC4 doesn't boot we need the following information

(1) The content of the screen of
the "l" from -l is a small "L" and you can get it off Ubuntu. This information tells us the partitining scheme of your two disks.

(2)Use the Unbunto Live CD to mount your FC4 and list content of it /boot/grub/device.map. This shows us the disk order in the booting queue as known by FC4 when it was installed.

(3) The contenet of FC4's /boot/grub/menu.lst. This file contains the instruction for Grub to boot FC4.

(4) The content of FC4's /etc/fstab. This files tells FC4 which files it must loaded when being booted.

I think you killed off the booting of FC4 by altering the disk order after the Linux has been installed. That is why I ask you not to inferfere with it again.

Lastly I am 99% sure you can mount FC4 with Ubuntu Live CD so do it and use its Grub inside to make the generic Grub floppy. The Grub floppy you have now can be use if it allows you to boot to a Grub prompt, otherwise following the similar instruction to find stage1 and "dd" the stage1 and stage2 into a floppy as instructed previously.

This is the the instructions for you to "hoop" from Ubuntu into FC4, assuming your FC4 is in partition hda3 so please adjust it according to the "fdisk-l" inforamtion.

Boot up Ubuntu Live CD
If you meet no error then the command prompt should change slightly, signifying you are now inside FC4.

While inside FC4 there is about 50:50 change you can use its desktop by typing
to drop back from FC4 desktop back to command prompt you press crtl+alt+backspace

To hop from FC4 back to Ubuntu Live CD you just type

So far the focus has been on trying to create a working boot floppy at this point. Ubuntu and Knoppix Live
cds both were unable to do that so far with the exception of the Knoppix rescue pair if a cd was unbootable.
The instructions earlier posted as well as those found at: http://www.reallylinux.com/docs/bootdsk.html have
had no results in getting a basic boot disk together. Knoppix was able to directly access both hard drives in
contrast to ubuntu's limitations there. And Core 4 is seen on (hdb1) with 98SE seen on (hb4). Try and figure
that one out. Knoppix sees the two others(one 1gb root, one 2gb swap) as free space along with the remaining
89gb of current unpartitioned and available.

The "ls /lib/modules" command was what identified the ubuntu Live kernel as "2.6.12-9-386" while the Knoppix
version 4.0 kernel lists as "2.6.12". The next attempt will be to try the mount of Core 4 by varying methods
along with the instruction here to see if that will see results. Being that Knoppix Live cd was able to have
easy access to both hard drives, the second installation of Core 4 looked very well intact. The problem of a
bootable grub loader as well as rather different (hdb4) for 98SE now poses a different question. Unfortunate
to have someone stop by briefly with seven years experience with Linux to ask: "Why are you even bothering to
go with that old idea?". As someone has to service software as well as hardware, the familiarity of various
OSs does play a role in there somewhere. Will a boot floppy loading a grub loader see 98SE as (hb4)?