Hello all,
I've created a dual boot system with windows xp and fedora core six
I a using two hard drives, both fujitsu mhv2100bh drives on a sata interface in my HP dv9074cl laptop.
The first hard drive is detected as sda, with windows as sda1, sda2 being the restore partition, and sda3 being some empty space.
On sdb is where I have installed Fedora Core 6.
Aside from the random chance that it will actually boot to the installer (about a 8 out of 10 chance that it will freeze right after fixing the tsc skew on the amd turion 64 x2 tl-56 processor) it seems to install fine when i do get to the installer part.
It gives me the option to install a grub bootloader, and I do so. I put it in the mbr of sda and assume that it will work.
but here is the sticky part. It seems to install fedora fine, and then it says that it is installing the boot loader, but after it restarts it never goes to the bootloader, but directly into windows mce instead.
does anyone know why fedora 6 might not install the bootloader or put it in the wrong place after explicit instrutions to put it in the mbr of sda?
my laptop does nto have an option to boot from sdb, it just says boot to laptop hard drive and defaults to sda, and i have no way of gettin into the fedora 6 rescue thing without restarting my computer eighty times and hoping it will boot to it one of them
does anyone know why this might be happening and how i can fix it?
thank you

P.S. - my computer can boot from a usb key if needed

Can't be a direct help, but I remember reading a very similar problem within the last couple of months, that involved an HP laptop, and the cause was HP specific.
Maybe a google search can find it?

In Windows edit the boot.ini file to point to where Linux is installed.
Boot from the Linux CD1 or DVD and goto rescue mode and reinstall grub, make sure it is on the linux partition.

The boot.ini edit above should give you two options. Boot from XP or boot from Linux.

This assumes there is no specific hp error as mentioned above.

The problem is not with Linux but that the HP defaults to the first drive. To fix the problem you need to reconfigure the BIOS of the windows to change the boot order. I know that I had a great deal of problems getting my second drive, linux, to be recognized and since that is where the GRUB loader is located it was never seen when the system was being booted up.
Hope that this helps.