I have done massive amounts of searching and everything I read is different or incomplete and I am getting really frustrated. Here is my situation, hopefully someone can help me see the light.

AMD 64
ASUS K8V-X
Running XP on SATA drive.
Installed Fedora 3 on IDE drive.
The two are not physically connected.

1st) Now I cannot get into FC3_64 at all. If I use rescue and try to use either vmlinuz or login I get the following error: Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unkown-block(3,2). I have tried clean installs twice now. Is my installation dead?

2nd) I do not want to install to the MBR because I have installed XP too many times already and Auto Recovery has never worked. I just want to be able to launch Fedora by putting in a floppy everytime and have it run. I have tried all the reccomendations I have seen for this type of fix, but it usually pukes the minute I try to dump to a floppy, or I get a 1kb file with nothing in it.

FC2 worked for me in the past all by it's self, but since I have tried to couple it with windows - no dice. I am getting really irritated at how this whole thing is going down. Why does this dual-boot thing with linux have to be so damn difficult. I have been able, quit successfully to get XP and BeOS to work perfectly together, but not FC. Is it really this hard?

Sorry if I sound angry but this is very frustrating and I really want this work.

The support for 64 bit processors isn't top notch yet.

I had this error when the kernel I used didn't have a module loaded that was required by the kernel to run on that particular system. Did you download the 64 bit FC3 isos?

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu.../3/x86_64/iso/

That is the only two things I can think of.... sorry...

If you think it might be the first, I suggest you report it to bugzilla if no one here can fix it. Installation problems are annoying. X_X

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/easy_enter_bug.cgi

this might be irrelevant but have you downloaded the latest ASUS driver and bios updates?

Dont start out with the 64-bit FC3 it's still to buggy and as a noob you will just get frustrated. Start out with 32-bit FC2. Your FC2 dual boot issues are because your not defining your HD geometry when you install, this is a very well documented FC2 bug. Look here: http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/ After you use FC2 for awhile and the 64-bit FC3 has a chance to mature then you can switch. Just my 2cents worth.

I'd suggest 32bit as well for the moment, at least for you learning and/or main box. Maybe experiment with the 64bit on another partition. I still use a 32bit OS on my amd64...

I'll try what you guys suggest for and go with a more stable version. I'll let you know how it goes. Thanks. By the way what does theat specific kernel error mean?

I'm not sure what that error means, but it looks like during the partitioning part of the install it may have used some of your sata drive for installation (again, I'm not sure about this). If you install FC2 you will need to add the disk geometry on the command line. It probably will look like this: linux hda=14593,255,63 . If your IDE drive is the second drive it would be "hdb". When you get to the partitioning part pay attention to what it is doing. I have 2 HDs and if I let it, it will use both drives for the install. By suggesting for you to use the 32-bit version of FC2 or FC3, I'm just trying to save you all the grief I had when I started using Linux. At the time, the 2.4 kernel had just come out and was still buggy. Every time I had a problem I would think "what am I doing wrong?". But in retrospect it wasn't all my fault because there were still problems with the 2.4 kernel that hadn't been worked out.

While the computer is off disconnect the SATA hard drive. Power up the computer and re-install Fedora Core 3. Let it store the bootloader on the MBR on the PATA hard drive. After the installation, you should be able to boot into Linux. Power down the computer and connect the SATA hard drive. Power up the computer and set the BIOS to boot off the SATA controller. You should be able to boot into Windows. Now you have an option to boot to either hard drive through the BIOS until you configure the Linux bootloader to boot to the SATA hard drive. Both the Windows and Linux bootloader will be intact if you did it correct. This way you do not need a floppy, but it does not hurt to make boot floppies for both Windows and Linux.

Like some people said, 64-bit support in Linux is a little glitchy. I suggest install a 32-bit version of Linux and then compile programs with 64-bit instructions when you want a little added performance like in multimedia programs. Read the gcc and gcc++ compiler manual to figure out how to pass 64-bit options.

This means it does not understand the filesystem on that device or the device is incorrect. The ramdisk file initrd should contain the filesystem module and be loaded before busybox, an universal program that acts like Linux and its commands to boot to the real linux system, switches or pivots to the real Linux system. If the device is incorrect, you have to change it. Its probably trying to boot to the SATA hard drive which it does not have support for.

Ok, I unconnected the SATA drive and installed FC3 on the IDE with the 32bit version. I installed grub to the linux /boot and NOT the MBR. With the SATA disconnected I was able to boot directly into FC3, everything works great. I followed instructions on setting up the NT bootloader to display and link to the linux partition via dumping to a floppy(dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/root/fedora.lnk bs=512 count=1) and changing the windows boot.ini. After choosing Fedora I now get the lonely word GRUB on an otherwise black screen, for which I can do nothing but reboot. XP is still working fine. I am getting close I can feel it. Any option for resolution of this? Thanks thus far for all the great advice. There was definitely something major wrong with the 64 version.

Did you try typing "boot" next to the word "grub"?

Yeah, it would not accept any input it just hung there.