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I installed RedHat 8.0 on my laptop that currently has Win2k installed. I have a 40GB hard drive that I used PartitionMagic to partition as follows:
5GB Win2k (FAT32)
100MB Linux /boot (ext3)
27GB Windows Programs (FAT32)
7.5GB Linux / (ext3)
1GB Linux (swap)
These partitions were formatted in PartitionMagic prior to installing RedHat.
The install for RedHat went fine, and when prompted for a boot loader, I chose to not have one, but just to create a floppy boot disk. When the install finished and I rebooted with the floppy in the drive, all I get is "Boot Failed". If I remove the floppy and boot from hard drive, I boot into Win2k fine.
Is it a problem that I formatted the partitions with PartitionMagic and therefore skipped the formatting during the install of Redhat?
Once happened to me and had to boot from cd
there i had the cchance to create a boot disk before formatting, so i created de floopy and exited installation.....
and 1 gb of swap is probably too much... if you are planning to use it a a desktop computer, and unless you have nearly 500 mb is not worth it
Try installing LiLO, Windows' bot loader never managed correctly other OS. I think it is a little too much swap and definetley too much /boot... I have 30MB and it's half empty (and I keep two versions of my kernel there.) As for Swap....it ussualy is the double of RAM memory...
It shouldn't since the problem was at your boot disk. Try downloading www.toms.net/rb it is not a boot disk, it is a root. from there you can install LiLo. You canalso do that from the rescue CD (the install in redhat and mandrake)
I suggest making the boot partition smaller to about 16MB like trickykid suggested. Also you should reduce the swap size a bit.
Ive used partiton magic before as well to create those partitions and off memory it has complained before so I usually let linux create them for me
Oh and why can't u boot linux via Lilo. Ive done it before and Win2K has booted fine.
Although, if u didn't want lilo taking over and u wanted to use the NT loader instead thats possible as well.
All you have to do to Use NT's Loader to boot Linux is:
1.) boot linux off the RedHat CD in Rescue mode
2.) change root to your Redhat installation
(which in Redhat's Rescue mode usually is just the following command: chroot /mnt/sysimage)
3.) Then you need to install lilo but to your installation's partition by typing
/sbin/lilo -b /dev/hda(x) x=the partition u installed redhat onto
4. Then you need to grab the boot sector so that Win2K can boot it. This is done by typing:
Thanks for all the help, I finally got it working.
Here's the breakdown:
I resized all the partitions as suggested and reinstalled RedHat. I created a boot floppy and when I rebooted I got the same error "Boot Failed". I guess I should have indicated that I was booting from an USB floppy. I took lancedamad's's suggesstion and booted to rescue mode and followed your directions. However, since this is a USB device I had to mount with /dev/sda instead of /dev/fd0. Once I did this, I copied it to floppy and edited my boot.ini. Now I can use NT's boot loader to dual boot between Win2k and Linux.
Thanks again for everyone's help. You make trying Linux ALOT easier!!!
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