Hello. I need Desperate
help on installing Fedora Core. If I am running windows XP and I have already repartitioned my hard drive, and I want to be able to use Linux in 1,3,or5 run levels, what do I do for my boot loader, and I DON't wanna screw up my XP partition? Pengy:

First of all , back up all your important data of your XP .. cause if you're new to linux its really easy to screw up a lot !! and if your XP chrashes , then it wont be a big problem .

I'm running a dualboot Fedora Core 1 and Windows XP for al long time now and it works fine.Here are The steps I took !

My XP was installed on a 20 GIG disk and I used partitionmagic to shrink it to 5 , the rest would be for linux ..

Boot Fedora from CD and start the install, just follow the basic steps , until you reach the partition part , this is tricky , DON'T chose automatic partion , cause it might mess up your XP part. Just manually configure your linux partitions , dont forget the Swap . Continue the install and at some point you will get to the bootloader part .Here it will show a DOS installation , which actually is your XP install (you can easily rename this during or after install in /boot/grub.conf file) and continue the Install , and that's all !
Grub will be installed to your MBR and thus overwrite your existing XP MBR (no problem cause Grub boots your XP) and if you ever run into trouble perhaps because your linux chrashes (?) and you would like to switch back to only XP (?) you run the XP installation cd (diskettes) and in recovery mode , recover the MBR, and XP is back ..

I dont know if its possible but if Fedora offers LILO as bootloader (I know Red Hat 8 or 9 does) you can choose to use LILO and leave your MBR alone and use XP bootloader , by installing LILO on a floppy .. I did this when I was starting Linux but it actually doesnt matter which you use you only see the bootloader a few seconds .. If you would like the XP loader then google a bit , I found a howto a while ago on a SUSE site : google for NT + LINUX + DUALBOOT + LILO + HOWTO

And as always , BACK UP IMPORTANT STUFF ,
I hope i've been helpful here , I'm no linux guru so .. no guarantees but it worked for me

What Jingle said applies for me too, with one difference.

When I shrunk the XP partition I did not apply any kind of formatting to the newly freed up disk space. Then during install I just told fedora to use empty disk space, accepted the installers recommended partions (ie /boot/ /swap/ etc) and everything went fine.

HTH

mark

Chris,

If you wish to use the NT Loader to dual boot the system you will need to do the following:

When you get to the point that Anaconda asks where you wish to install the bootloader, make certain you chose your FC boot partition, e.g. /dev/hda2, and NOT the MBR. You can use either GRUB or LILO, it doesn't matter. After the install and before you re-boot make sure you make a bootdisk.

Now, when you re-boot do so with the bootdisk so you can boot into FC. Once booted, log in as 'root' and insert a blank floppy then copy out the boot sector like so:

mount /dev/fd0
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/floppy/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

(hda2 may not be the actual partition you need to copy, I use this as an example)

You can now ls /mnt/floppy to verify you have a 512 byte file named "bootsect.lnx" and then:

umount /dev/fd0

Next, boot into XP and copy the bootsect.lnx file to the root directory of the C: drive. Edit your BOOT.INI file and add a line:

C:\bootsect.lnx = "Fedora Core"

Save the file and re-boot. You will see the NT Loader menu offering you either Windows XP or FC. If you choose FC it will jump you into the GRUB or LILO bootloader. If you added your Windows partition in your Linux bootloader during the install you will see a choice for FC or DOS/Windows. If you scroll and choose Windows, it will put you back into the NT Loader menu screen.

I know this is a little bit of work, but it's the only way I know how to do dual boot and maintain the Microsoft MBR intact. You must use the floppy to copy out the Linux bootsector because you cannot write directly to an XP NTFS volume. Good luck.

- JD