I'm hoping someone can help. I looked through similar threads on several web sites but can't find my exact problem.

I am running XP Pro on a Seagate 80 gb hd, and installed Red Hat ver. 8 to a second hd (Maxtor 30 gb). It installed fine and I was able to dual boot to whichever OS I needed for a day or so.

Now it is doing the following:
After the BIOS screen, the choice screen comes up, I choose XP, it goes to the XP screen, then goes to a full page screen indicating there was a problem loading. It asks me to highlight safe mode, normal boot or last known config., etc. No matter which option I choose, it loops to the XP screen and back to this one until I hit the off switch. Sometimes it freezes, sometimes not.

I had to repair my mbr for XP, so I assume it is writing over it during installation, but I can't determine what to do differently, or if it is a combination of that and something else.

Thanks so much for any help.

majickalme44

Hi,
i don't think there is any issue with the MBR. Since its your linux bootloader there and not windows one.
Anyways you should try to repair XP and in case it overwrites the MBR, take the bootable cd of your linux distro.....boot the machine into rescue mode and re-install the linux bootloader there in MBR.

regards

This sounds more like a problem with windows itself. Try and see what messages are coming up on screen before it reboots. I have had this issue before with windows failing to load. I can't think what it was though. Possibly a problem with windows not being able to locate a particular system file or somesuch.

Thanks for the input. I fixed my mbr for XP, then reinstalled GRUB onto the first partition on the slave drive. It works as long as I use a floppy to boot Linux. If anyone knows why it won't give me a choice at start-up and let me boot either one without a boot disk, I would love to know.

I'm sorry, this is starting to sound like a software issue.

Hi, I manage to put RED HAT and SUSE and WinXP alltogether in single DRIVE and choose what I like to BOOT without any FLOPPY. But first save your XP into GHOST on another drive if you dont wanna loose DATA. Looks imposible to do but its EASY if you know HOWTO.
☺☺☺

you should have installed GRUB in the MBR of primary drive. Then only it will give you the choice at start-up.

But again it has a draw back. If you remove your slave drive, in which you have linux, you won't be able to boot windows.
So its better to have dual-boot machine with multiple distros in the same hard drive.

regards

To clear up the Bottleneck on MBR/ use LOWFORMAT utility(this will recondition the HARDISK as 'new' unformatted).(***I use it coz once LINUX writes the MBR it cannot be cleared by wndow***) Firstly install WINDOW on your HARDSIK after that UNIX clan ALL OFF THEM HAVE TO BE MANUALLY PARTITIONED.This should works out well.........[[careful on doing LOFORMAT]][[Warning*** LOFORMAT may destruct HARDISK if not correctly done__USE LINUX to remove patition instead***)Latest Hardware(MOBO) has a Boot Block Selection you can boot Hardisk from anywhere(primary slave or secondary master if you have many HARDISK)WindowHOMEedition cannot be moved to another IDE-BBS /winPROFedittion more flexible.At last you will LOVE your machine.REGARDS

You can just use the command fixmbr (using an XP install CD to repair the windows installation)to clear what is in the MBR and revert it back to Windows only, or just use Grub or Lilo or whatever to rewrite it.

I mean after I use the 80GB HDD for linux, I cannot reinstall Win98/MS clan soft on it( cannot be boot even Fdisk/MBR happens in few times). So my LOFORMAT will kill'em all......sorry this is rather extreme but woth a living. ((DONT USE LOFORMAT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING))

hi,
thats not the issue with MBR.
what window requires while installation is that it should get the 1st primary partition of HD as of type windows i.e fat/fat32. If its of some other type like ext2/ext3, which windows doesn't recognize, then even bootable cd's are not of any help.
so it was the issue in your case.
you could have changed the 1st primary partition as window type from linux.

regards

I imagine that that the FIRST SECTOR of HDD must be FAT/FAT32 or NTFS. I havent inspect wether its MBR or FIRST SECTOR but I remembered I had removed all LINUX partition(). I experienced this matter since I have Athlon 500 Mhz ,now I have P4 3GHZ ;that would be a long period of time since I use LOFRMT. Some HDD cannot withstand LOFORMAT so I dont recomend on doing it. NOW XP have administrator tool that has DISK management wich can be use to remove partitions;I usually use that.I use loformat not like it should be/normally. Again dont count on loformat like I do.I was just looking for an easiest way of cleaning up my HDD instead.