Help getting Linux to boot....
 

Ok heres the problem in a nut shell then I will copy the techno bable that my husband wrote up. Ok I instaled it just fine but it will not boot no matter what I try have reinstaled it 5times and still the same problem. This is the indepth stuff.

We are trying to set up the computer to dual boot windows XP and Fedora Core 4 (this combination was recommended by CF). First, we had an existing install of Windows XP on drive C: (hda1). All went well, we installed Fedora Core 4 to the second physical hard drive (it had previously been D in windows, the Linux installer detected it as hdb1). Along the way we chose to use Grub (as per CF's recommendation) and set it to be installed to the MBR of hda1.

Installation finishes properly with no errors, and prompts for a reboot.

Computer reboots to windows XP.

after poring over the net for tutorials the closest thing to a solution I'd found was: (Sorry can't post the link of what my husband found but it was from this site.)


but when I get to the following step it tells me that /dev/fd0 cannot be accessed:

"Type mcopy boot.lnx a:"

sorry I don't have the screen in front of me to get the exact error.

i've got some hunches about ways to get around this but could really use some advice here, any ideas?

So any advise you could give would be great.

I realy hope this is in the right spot. And I realy hope that someone can help. My husband will probely be replying to this latter with my user name.

I even tried no dule boot but that did not work eather.

ok now I can post the link

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...a+4+windows+xp

maby this will help more with what we tried. And it still did not work.

Ignore. I didn't read far enough into this thread.

ack then what do I do. lol

LadyGrelka how about you get rid of the sig ???.
So much crap it's hard to find your posts.

Those instructions seem reasonable.
Do you have an internal floppy drive ???. Or do you use a usb connected one ??.

I have an internal floppy drive but as far as linux is concerned I don't have a floppy.

Hi everyone, I'm the husband in question here.

the floppy is detected in bios (and windows) as A: but linux isn't seeing it for some reason when linux boots from the rescue CD it has no /dev/fd0 at all. When I try to mount the drive it says that it's missing from /etc/fstab and when I try to add it to fstab it seems to work just fine but isn't actually talking to the floppy at all. (I think it just creates a mount point on the hard drive?)

Anyway, this is all rather beside the point. During linux install we are selecting Grub as the boot manager. It defaults to the MBR of hda1, but some tutorials I found instructed that it be put in /boot/ on hdb1 instead. I've tried it both ways. When installing it to the MBR of hda1 nothing seems to happen. When installing it to /boot/ on hdb1 it at least boots to grub, but doesnt' give any options whatsoever and we cannot boot.

Any ideas? This really should "just work" when installing FC4, according to the documentation. It shouldn't need any of this messing around with windows, or floppies. It should install grub to the hda1 MBR and load up at next boot but it doesn't, and therein lies our real issue.

So this is my question how do I get it working?