Hi,

I am new to linux. I have a core 2 duo 6300 cpu with gigabyte GA 965G-DS3 mobo.
I have xp installed with 4 partions in one 200GB ide drive. Planned to install FC6 on
partition 2 and swap use 3 and share data on parition 4 and make it dual boot.
When I installed FC 6,
FC6 only showed one drive dhj nothing else. I proceeded with FC6 install. It did not
allow me to set up GRUB at all (no option was given). When done, my windows xp is gone.
The system only boot from FC6 now. When I put my XP cd in to boot from cd. I could not boot
XP any more. Tried to boot from Maxtor CD to repartition the HD. But could not boot from
Maxtor bootable cd either. Tried many times without any luck. Does anyone know how can I fix this?

Thx

new2linux222

sounds an awful lot like you pressed one too many "NEXT"'s and have lost it forever. if you do boot into Fedora, run "fdisk -l" to list all partitions known to the system. unless you can see one clearly marked as FAT32 or NTFS then you will have somehow wiped all the partitions. if you're not able to interpret the output of fdisk, i'd suggest posting the output there and we'll tell you what each partition is probably for...

Need to see output from the command ' /sbin/fdisk -l '.
Output from ' cat /etc/fstab '
Output from ' cat /etc/mtab '

It may not give you a grub option if you let it automatically partition the drive.

Brian

I do not think I pressed the next key too many times. I was very cautious when I installed
FC6. Actually I tried FC5 before but it would not recognize my hardware. Then I download
the FC6 and used the "linux install all-generic-ide" to boot. Otherwise I still have
problem with FC6. Anyway, thanks for the suggestion. I am going to try it. thx

here is my fdisk -l output.
It seems that my xp partition is still there. But how could I make the system recognize it and allow me to dual boot?

[root@localhost ~]# /sbin/fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdf: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdf1 * 1 12748 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdf2 12749 24320 92952090 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdf5 12749 19122 51199123+ e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/hdf6 19123 20397 10241406 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/hdf7 20398 20410 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdf8 20411 24320 31407043+ 8e Linux LVM

Lets see if XP is fine. Fix the MBR back to default.
first of all fix Mater Boot Record....
boot from windows cd and select repair...on prompt give this command...
c:\> FIXMBR
if you are using bootable floopy... command is ...
a:\> fdisk /mbr

Reboot and see if XP comes up.

Now to get Grub back on the MBR of drive /dev/hda
reboot using linux cd and type linux rescue
Let it mount the partitons
chroot /mnt/sysimage
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

Brian

So is grub installed now? If so you can check the GRUB readmes on the internet on the settings to include in grub.conf to let grub boot off your XP partition.

You can probably add something like:

title Microsoft Windows XP
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

to your grub.conf and reboot. Hopefully it should work

Thanks for all the helps. I finally got my Windows xp back.
It did not get wipe out by Fedora. I got it back by quickly press F12 right before fedora boots. Then I can see the GRUB menu.
It lists two Fedora Core 6 and one other. If I select the other,
I can boot to Windows. The only problem I have right now is that I could not boot Windows from my CD or floppy disk any more. When booting from CD, after "inspecting your hardware..." brief shown on screen, the system hung. If I try to boot from floppy disk, it goes right into fedora. Right now I want to wipe out my HD clean and start over. But I could not boot from Windows cd. I think I may need to take the HD out and format it on another pc and try it again. I did not expect to install a linux would be this hard. But I will keep trying.

If you can't boot off your cd you need to go into your system's BIOS and change the boot order of your drives. Every BIOS can be different so unfortunately I can't give you a general idea where to go, but it's a pretty basic setting and you should be able to find it by going into each BIOS menu and just reading through all the options.

Yes I have done that to set the first boot device as CD rom.
The system hung after saying checking hardware configuration.
I even reset the bios to factory default and then set all the boot devices to CD ROM. The system still would not boot from Windows XP.
It hung during checking system hardware. Not sure what's wrong.