HI,

I have a p4 3.2ghz HT with 4 sata hard drives.
my Windows XP work well.

i tried to install FC3 on the computer and probs comes.

in the installation menu i choose to install grub on mbr. after the installation of the fc3 windows xp boot without any grub menu.
i tried the reinstall it again, in the advance bootloader option i'had click on "Sort hard disk" and set SDC has the first one (i thinking that my mbr is here and not on SDA). after the installation on the boot there is un balck sreen with, in the left top corner, "GRUB". and nothing more. no choose, no boot possible, nothing... what about that ?

So my first questions is how can check (with windows or linux rescue) where is my mbr ( i mean on witch HDD) ? i think i have 2 mbr but only one on SDC used. what is the difference if i install grub on the mbr or on the partition ? anyone have the same prob ? what about this balck sreen with grub wrote ?

after all of that i used my xp cd in rescue mode typed fixboot and fixmbr and it's ok for my windows XP but how to install this fedora core 3 with a grub witch work ? (i try to install fc3 on sdc).

one thing again. my disk order on windows are not the same as linux.

disque 0 on xp is with my Windows. on linux it's SDC.. SDA and SDB are on XP 2 data disque. no os os them...


thanks in advance...... Dezeque

mbr is master boot record. It has to be on the hard disk where your computer boots from. Installing grub on mbr gives you the opportunity to control from which disk and partition to continue booting. That's the whole idea of a boot manager. I hope this gives you a starting point.

First off, don't label your question as "urgent" -- it won't help in the slightest. We are all volunteers here, and help when and as we can.

The important point is to install Grub to the MBR of the disk that is set in the Bios to be the one that is booted first. You may want to go into the Bios and check the serial number of it, before reinstalling FC3. Alternatively, you could install Grub to a floppy, until you are able to understand the boot sequence (there should be an option during the FC3 setup for this).

Cheers,

mj

Are these SATA disks in a raid-0 array ???.
This (generally) requires drivers for Windows, even when sold as mother-board supported "hardware raid".
If so, from other posts I've seen, you can expect problems. Better spend some time searching, both LQ and the net generally.

The word "grub>" on a blank screen indicates grub is in the MBR, but can't locate it's stage files. Shouldn't have worked at all I would have thought, based on what you posted.

Hi,

no raid array configured..... yester day i tried to fix my prob i did used grub-install command on /dev/XXX i tried on each entry i saw in fdisk -l and now i have one partition dead on xp. when click on my D:\ in my computer the system ask to me : "this partition is unformated would you like to format it now" it's a big prob for many very important data on it. what can i do to get my partition back ?

Hi dezeque,
Firstly, I'm new to Linux myself, but I had a similar problem with Mandrake and XP, and ended up loosing all my data on the XP partitions. So, judge for yourself what to do.

Here's some suggestions I got after the fact.
I hope you answered no. Windows doesn't read Linux partitions. It's got to do with tha filesystem type. I know WinXP uses FAT32 or NTFS and Linux uses ext2/ext3 and some others. If you have a LiveCD - like KNOPPIX - boot up with that and see if you can see the dead XP partition, and maybe move/copy the files to another partition.

As far as I can understand /hda0 is always the first harddrive's mbr.

[QUOTE]what about this balck sreen with grub wrote ?[QUOTE] I believe that the problem is not that GRUB didn't load, it just doesn't have any options to display. You say you installed GRUB with the advanced bootloader option, did you check that you have both FC3 and WinXP detected?

That's a worry - writing the boot-loader code shoudn't have that effect. What version of grub are you using ???.
I agree Knoppix is generally great at this - maybe also consider the system rescuecd. Both are on the LQ Download link.

Hi,

first of thanks for your help.

i resolved my probleme with a software called partion table doctor. If someone have the same problème i can tell him how to get back alive partition with the marvelous software.

for my grub prob it's not resolved. i don't know witch version it is. this the version bring with the FC3 DVD.


i maybe know a part of the problème. my /dev/sda is y:\ on windows xp it's a data disc. when i install it i tried to install grub on mbr on that disk but dosen't work.

what it better ? install grub on mbr or on the begin of the partiton ? you know what i mean ? you have this type of choose on the FC3 installation.

thanks in advance...

well with red hat 9 i had to install both on same hard drive or only windows would boot and as for both on same HDD i had to install red hat first in order to get the boot loader to work i'm a newbie to so this may have just been my situation but maybe it will help you out.

good luck

Go here: http://www.google.com/linux
Type in 'dual boot XP'
The very first line reads: http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

As mentioned, there is only one (active) MBR - that's on the disk the BIOS points to. If you install to the "MBR" of any other disk, it will never be found (at boot) unless you change the BIOS to use that as the initial boot disk.
As I said, installing to some other disk should *NOT*screw up the partiton table on that disk.

If you can't determine the version, I'm beginning to think maybe it's best to install to a partition. If FC3 doesn't set it up properly (it should BTW), that link Emerson posted might help you understand what needs to be done.

Thanks you all for you helps. i will check thoses URl when i got times.