GRUB Dual Boot system errors with XP and Fedora 3
 

-= Warning :newbie: =-

Information

- Windows XP is on the master Hard Drive and alwasy has been sense i recieved the computer from Dell
- Fedora Core 3 (recievied from my programming teacher at achool) is on the Slave Drive (i think this is my problem but before switching the drives and possibly causing more damage i want to consult the Gurus here) and has been there sense noon jan 8
- P4 1.8 ghz
- I did get oen error during instalation about the Office Sutie but it retryed and was fine

Now to the problem. When starting the system for the first time (and all the times following) i see the normal DELL screen that shows up before i see BIOS. I could hit F2 for Setup and F12 for Boot Options at this point but neither seem to affect what happens next. The BIOS loads and shows me a black screen except for one word in the top left. GURB. Nothing I press or do affects the computer and i know it is recieving the signals because i hear the sytem beeps. I tired hitting enter and restarting multiple times but nothin happens:confused: . I cannot boot from diskettes or cds because i cant even acces the Boot Menu. This is kind of spooky and disapointing as i was looking foreward to using linux.:cry:

Try getting into the BIOS settings and changing your computer to boot from CD.

I am a Linux newbie myself, but looking at what you have mentioned in your post (the system beeps upon pressing a key)...how about making sure that the keyboard is properly hooked up? Normally, a machine could faile to boot due to keyboard (connection) problems.

I am sorry if my answer is not even close to solving the problem.

//edit: oops!!! forgot to note that your system does clear the BIOS check before going to GRUB. You may discard my suggestion.

Ok i recovered fedora and reinstalled grub but it still gives me the same problem :( im really confused and dont understand why it is doing this even after a reinstall...

It does not even go into the 'GRUB' SCreen that everyone seems to talk about(the one with the pretty picture behind it) It just idles on a black screen with the word GRUB and nothing else.

There were changes between the 2.4 and 2.6 kernels that affect dual booting.
The bug is known to exist in Fedora Core 2 and 3, Mandrake 10 and several other distro's.

I'm stilling running RH9 with a 2.4 kernel myself, so I don't know much about the details. You can read about it here and here and especially here, though.

although enlightining on other errors the websites you provided still do not seem to apply to me. GRUB does not even boot. I cannot pick WinXp and then it crashes, I cant give any type of input to the computer whatsoever.

Are you able to get into Linux? Can you access the boot loader from the system configuration tools in KDE?

No. This EXACTLY what happens.

- I hit ON button
- I see the dell screen (at this point I can hit F2 to alter boot options or F12 to chose the boot location)
- I see a black screen (assuming i didnt press F2 or F12) and the word GRUB appears in the topelft.
- I can do nothing else after this. If i hit a key it beeps if i hit enter it beeps and if i hit CTRL-ALT-DELETE it restarts

I realy wish there was a smiley for VERY VERY MAD!!! and then a sighing one.

I feel for you. When I first tried Red Hat on Wednesday of last week it would not install properly. When I tried install Mandrake over it my bootloader stoped working corectly. I was able to get back into Windows by inserting my XP dist and going to recovery and doing something like boot repair. You should be able to boot from CD. You may have to change the options in your Bios, but I'm guessing it is already set up if you booted the Linux install CDs.

Yes I think that may be my last option. Tomorrow (11th) im gonna do that if i cant get linux working.

Did you end up getting linux working?

im still waiting for a recovery disc but i was wondering if there was a way to boot grub from the recovery thing in linux?