This is a new (gateway) box running XP Pro. Before trying to install Fedora, the disk was acting a little strange. We could not delete a file, XP kept insisting that the disk was locked or that another user was using the file. We passed this off as a Windows bug (or me not knowing enough about Windows).

Yesterday, I re-installed XP, then installed FC 2. I took the defaults for a workstation installation, including using Grub of LILO, and letting the installation automatically partition the (single) hard drive. It seemed to go successfully, until rebooting at the end. I never saw the grub logo, just the XP screen saying hit <F10> to boot and <f2> to go to the BIOS. Hitting any possible (obvious) key combination gave me nothing. <f10>, <f2>, cntrl-alt-del, etc.

Trying to boot off of an XP CD, a FC 2 rescue CD, or a floppy gave the same result. Our system guy looked at it, decided it was a bad hard drive, and we tried another hard drive. It now worked fine. This also seemed to explain the inability to erase a file earlier in the week.Yesterday we re-installed XP on the new drive, and called it a day. We were concerned that the bad hard drive caused it to hang rather then boot off of the other devices.

This morning (it booted fine into XP, and again on the FC 2 install disk), I attempted to install FC 2 again. This time we tried to partition it ourselves, and may have made a typo. I meant to tell it to give me 6G for /usr, (later) when I attempted to install it complained that /usr was too small, and needed to be at least (some small number). Perhaps I told it 600 MB instead of 6000MB, or perhaps the partion table was hosed I'm not sure. We tried to back up to the partition part, but that ship had sailed, so we exited on out. Same boot problem, same screen, same symptoms.

Disconnecting the hard drive lets me boot from the recovery CD (but I can't use rescue on the harddrive, and can't find anything out).

Questions:

Is this the same problem discussed in "Prevention and Recovery of XP Dual Boot Problems"-- perhaps compounded by some BIOS problem that won't let me boot off of the CD if the hard-drive isn't kosher? Or is it something else? Has anybody seen this before?

How can I:

Get Fedora installed, and

Re-use these two disk drives?


Any help is appreciated.


Thanks,


Bob

You may need to repartition and reformat the hard drive then do a clean install. Before you enter ANY settings be sure you understand what you are expected to input. Check BIOS to see if the boot order is as you want it to be.

I'm guessing this is a different problem. The BIOS (version # BZ87510A.15A.0114.P13) doesn't have an option for LBA. Running Fdisk on the disks (after trying to install on both, so not sure how valid the numbers are give C, H, S = 155061, 16, 63. (Both are western Digital WD800BB)
The computer is a Gateway E 6100.


Taking the disks to an older computer, I can do the sfdisk fix:


sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H16 -C155061 /dev/hda

but still can't use the hard disk to boot the gateway. Using an older machine, and (dos) FDISK, I removed all of the partitions and tried to install JUST FC 2 (no XP). Same problem (yes, the BIOS boot device priority was correct. It now reads that the CD is first, followed by the floppy but the Hard drive (which was the 3rd choice) is not showing up since it is not installed). Early on it seemed to falter with a USB stick plugged in, so I removed the USB from the rotation. This problem (and the file erasure problem) showed up before I inserted any Fedora disks, so it still might be "somebody elses problem", or a combination of problems.

This time, when I took it down the hall to the old machine, I attempted to boot the older machine (which DOES have the LBA option selected). It started what looked like a normal boot before getting really confused that all of the old hardware was missing and all of the existing hardware was new. It didn't have the correct drivers, but started a "normal" boot before choking. I used (DOS) FDISK to remove all of the partitions, and tried to install FC one more time, (again, no XP, just FC), this time prefacing the install with


linux hda=155061,16,63

went through a normal install, but again failed to boot, even off of a CD, until I removed the offending hard drive.


Any ideas? I'll try to install the FC 1 next and see if that works any better, but I'd really rather beat on FC 2. I might try to re-install XP (don't have much use for it, it was going to stay there as a crutch since it came on the box and there was plenty of drive space). After installing XP I could use fdisk again and see if it changed some of the CHS values (since I never looked at them before the first FC install on either disk)?

What should I try next?


Thanks,

Bob

I have the same problem. I installed FC2 on a new hard drive and cannot boot from it on either of my machines. I have tried booting it from a floppy, the rescue disk and even a windows boot disk and finally tried booting it from a win xp disk. As soon as that hard drive is hooked up to the system, the system locks at the boot screen. Does anyone know how I can get that drive to boot so I can either reinstall FC2 or just write zeros so I can use the drive?

Thanks in advance

Hopefully somebody else will chime in on how to actually use FC 2. In order to re-use the disk, I took it to an older machine (another gateway, TBR500, circa 1995. It was running BIOS version # 4M4PBOX1.15A.0026.P14)

I booted with a (?) Windows boot disk, and ran FDISK. I removed all of the partitions (this was a brand new drive, I had no data on it. This will obviously trash your data). Then I powered this machine down, re-installed the hard drive in the original machine, and booted off of either the CD or the floppy. Both worked at different times. I was then able to install whatever I wanted (except FC 2) on that drive (in the original computer) w/ no problems. The problem repeated anytime I tried to re-install FC 2, even when I used the published fixes re: the head count.

Just for grins, could you let me know some of the particulars of the machine you are having this problem with? Hardware and BIOS?

Thanks,


Bob