Boot screen problem
 

Hello,
I resently put FC3 on my second partition, and on the other was windows xp. Everything was working fine on both partitions after the install. I could use linux then I could go into windows when I wanted with the boot screen that gives me the choice of which o.s to boot up. I was using windows to read up on how to use linux, but recently the last time I restarted my pc from windows (not the first time) the boot screen is gone. I only have linux that boots up by default. Anyone know what happend to the boot screen that give me the two options and how to get it back?

Is the "boot screen" that you are referring to grub's boot menu? If it is, it may just be going by too fast. The FC3 default timeout is 5 seconds.

Since you are able to boot Linux, edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf. In there, there's a value called "timeout". Change it to (say) 30, for 30 seconds and see if that solves your problem.

I'm still a newb, I found the file grub.conf , but what do I use to edit it? A text editor? How do I edit it?

btw, the file (grub.conf) has a little "anti" sign next to it.

Hmmm. Are you saying that there is no file called:

/boot/grub/grub.conf

Instead, there is only a file called:
/boot/grub/grub.conf~

If that's the case, then that is odd; there should be a grub.conf file; the latter one is probably a backup image.

Yes, one uses a text editor (like vi) to edit the file.

If you want to change the boot file, I'd recommend that you first make a backup of your valuable files on the system. While it is possible to recover from a mangle grub.conf file, it's not something I'd recommend for someone new to Linux.

If you take a look at the grub.conf~ file, and it looks correct, you could just use cp to copy it to grub.conf. If it isn't correct, then grub is going to have difficulty booting. And frankly, the simplest method of recovering may just be to reinstall.

Normally, FC3 does leave a grub.conf file there. I have no idea why your installation didn't.

i've had that happen to me as well before the grub screen just didn't show up and i've (had) the thing set at a twenty second count down...

one day i rebooted the computer and there was nothing, system would just hang, i could type, had a message saying 'minimal bash scripting supported' or something like and at the time i had no idea what the hell was going on... typing 'start x' didn't do anything...

ended up completely reinstalling eeeverything linux oriented... still don't know what happened how the grub just disappeared altogether like that...