ok, i installed fedora core 6 after many years of anticipation (i finally got my own computer, yes i'm a minor, but i'm not as foolish and nieve as most my age, so give me some credit) I tried dual booting but every time i ran the computer windows would run as default even though i told it otherwise. Now that i installed it on both hd, it wont load at all, it gives me a message like "failed to load operating system" what do i do?

When you install Fedora, what partitioning options are you selecting?

And what bootloader options?

See if you can boot up from the Fedora install disk and get into a terminal by typing ctrl-alt-F1. From the terminal, do "fdisk -l" and tell us what you get.

k, i'll do that and post in a few minutes thanks, as for partitioning, i choose, delete all partitions and install linux, for bootloader, i told it to install the fedora core standard bootloader.

...Ok no i cannot load from the installation disk, chances are i'll have to go back to that oh so popular spawn of satan that is windows.

Wow---don't give up that easily!!!

Do you mean the install CD will not boot? Is the BIOS set to boot from CD?

Can you boot from any CD?

If all else fails, get another live CD off of a magazine or something

i have set the computer to boot from the cd, and it still will not boot, it tries to, it gives me a message that lets me know it sees the cd, but after this it will not load, this happened before about a month ago, when i first got the computer, i would get to pretty much random points of the installation and the cd would quit, sometimes it would only get as far as seeing the disk...as it does now. I'm contemplating downloading the cd iso images this time, instead of the massive 1 disk dvd iso image, so there is less chance of error in downloading. I got the first dvd from a friends older brother who is a linux guru, but i would rather not go to him for help, becouse he is probably the most egoncentric guy i know....and that clashes with my big ego (lawl)

((i never said i was giving up, i only ment that it is my luck with technology that things will fail, they almost always do....I know there is no way you could of known that from what i said, sorry.))

well thank you for your help pixellany, i got it to work, i reintalled windows, so that i could at least boot the comp, then i reinstalled linux, after this it ran, i dont know what was wrong, probably just an error in installing.

Good for you!!!

...I'm glaring at the computer right now. So it finnally got working, and was going well until i got a seirius error in windows, one that no level of dos hacking would fix....(i have to keep it cause thats what my high school uses) so i reinstalled that again
and got to the same problem as before...so i've formatted both hard drives (one scsi and one ide) set the scsi for the main drive, I installed linux on the ide and windows on the scsi and i'm still getting the same error, so i go back and install linux on both drives. And i now am exactly back where i started, i did in fact go to my linux guru for help, as well as my dad who has been working with home computers since before most knew they existed. My dad refuses to help me becouse he thought that i shouldnt of installed fedora without him. So now i'm still confused as to what to do.

teh choices I made in installing fedora
so obviously i'm doing somthing wrong, if you could be so kind, to aid me again?

I had same problem but with Suse 10.1, I ended up using a great little program called G.A.G. I dont have any links but you can google it im sure. It is just a simple floppy disk program that boots any number or os's you want. Very simple, very easy. check it out. you must have a floppy drive in order for this to work, but the disk boots before any grub, lilo, or Windows boot program. Its great

well thanks, i downloaded it, but i dont know that i can install windows any more. I need to format my hd first but i cannot get to a dos shell. (i'm not good with dos, so i dont use it often, i dont know how to get to it without using an os. Though i'm getting help soon.)
besides that, i do thank you for your help, but i dont know that that well work, when all i have is fedora core, i cannot load anything at all. i get the message

"error loading operating system"

For what its worth, i suggest first checking the md5 sum is correct and/or then trying another CD unit. Some i've experienced are borderline flaky and the media can check ok but go awry when actually doing the install.

ive cheked the media, and it said that the media was ok, (i was surprised at that being as on occasion the installation wont even load)

I dowloaded the bootloader the guy suggested and i was told that fedora core was not installed on the computer.

Before trying anything else, do a couple of basic checks of your system. You have two hard drives, so check the jumpers on both make sure they are set properly (master or slave-- I don't use scsi so I have no idea there)even if you have one drive on a ide, if you have the jumper set to slave instead of master it will cause problems . In the bios look to make sure that you have one drive set as primary device. Install Windows on the primary/master hard drive first and linux on the second drive after. Install the boot-loader (lilo/grub)to the primary/master-windows drive , (for dual-boot).
Sometimes you can bash your head for hours trying to figure things out only to find a simple little thing is a fix.
Good luck---and don't give up !

thank you, but i alreadyknew to check all this, and i plan on setting the scuzzy (scsi for those of you who dont know)for slave, but i dont know the jumper set for that.