Good evening all. I'm brand new to Linux and am liking it pretty well - when I can get to use it. I've installed Mandrake 10.1 Official, Novell Desktop 9, and now Fedora 3. Just finished downloading the 4 i386 iso files, burned them and installed this afternoon. No problems. When I got done, a little red symbol informed me there were updates, so I clicked on it and a whole bunch of programs downloaded and installed. (I'm writing this from memory with nothing in front of me to verify!) I booted into Win XP Home SP-1 with no problems - all is working just fine.

Here is where the fun begins: I can't get back into Linux, it isn't even offered as an option. Got out the rescue cd and tried to start it up that way. I found a thread that explained about using the XP boot manager to boot into Linux. I tried this: copied boot.lnx to a:, booted back into windows, copied boot.lnx to the root drive of c:\, edited my boot.ini file to look like this:
[boot loader]
default=multi (0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
c:\boot.lnx="RedHat Fedora Core 3 Project"

I still can't boot into Fedora. What do I do?

Pastor Ron

You probably haven't installed grub. The boot loader. The easy way is to use the first grub cd. It should detect your fedora distro in the hard disk, and will give you an option to install grub. If this doesn't work post back, you'll have to do it the hard way (actually not so hard). Why didn't you install the bootloader?

I thought I did install the boot installer! Here's what happened. After I installed Fedora 3 and downloaded the updates, I rebooted to XP, played around for a short while, and rebooted again, thinking I would get the option to go back into Linux. After the first reboot (after install of Linux) XP asked if I would like to do a full system recovery with the software that came with my computer or if I just wanted to use a restore point. I didn't elect to do the recovery, but I did elect to use a restore point. When XP came up I just cancelled out of the prompt seeing there was really no need to use a restore point as XP was working just fine.

perfect_circle, you mentioned using the first grub cd. Is that the same as FC3 - i386-disc1.iso?

Thanks,

Pastor Ron

yes.
If this does not work, boot with the rescue cd (5th), choose to mount your FC3 partition, I think the mount point is /mnt/sysimage(I can't recall, you'll see it in a window where you will be asked if you want to mount it read-only). Then do:
chroot /mnt/sysimage (if this is the correct path)
grub-install /dev/hda (to install grub in the mbr)
Maybe you can do that with the first cd also, check the option in the begging, there may be an "advanced options" menu using one of the Fx x=1-12 buttons.

Good morning everyone. I am still having problems with dual-booting. I did what perfect-circle suggested and was able to get into Fedora. It was great, except there was no cd recognition, so I couldn't play music. That's odd, though, because I was able to copy some of my data onto my Linux partition using a cd-r/w. After the copying of files is when Linux didn't recognize the cd drive. In fact, it wouldn't eject the cd-r/w, either. I had to do that manually.

Anyway, back to the original problem. After playing and learning in Fedora 3, I wanted to see if the boot loader worked, so I selected "other" when asked, and got the "Starting Compaq System Recovery" prompt. I didn't want that, so I just requested to restore from a restore point. After XP came up, I just backed out ot the restore point option, too. XP still works fine, but I'm trying to learn and use Fedora 3, and would eventually like to cut ties with M$ altogether. I think it would be best for me to work one problem at a time. There's only a few more things that need to be resolved before making the leap. Am I supposed to start antother thread for those problems? Thanks for the help.

BTW, I have found the open source community some of the nicest people anywhere. I have been pleased with the help I've gotten from various forums.

Pastor Ron