Back when Fedora 8 was fairly new, I installed it on one of my computers and I had this same problem. I fixed it back then, but remember very little of what I did. I know that the problem turned out to be that the boot menu was essentially set to turn off far too quickly (i.e., instantaneously). However, since the computer boots right into Windows, I'm not sure how to edit the grub loader so that I see the menu and have the opportunity to pick an OS. Can someone help me? I know this is solvable, and it can't be too complicated since a complete newbie like myself managed it once before.

Edit: Should have mentioned I'm using Win XP. Not sure which build of Fedora, though. Probably 8 or 9, as I downloaded it several months ago.

U must have the dvd/cd u've downloaded or not ??

The grub configuration file in fedora is /boot/grub/grub.conf. If the problem is the grub screen is disappearing too fast, you edit the line in grub.conf that looks like this:

timeout=<integer>

which gives the time in seconds that the grub screen is up before it boots the default selection. However, I doubt that's the problem. If you're booting directly into windows after a fedora install, you probably installed grub to the wrong place instead of the mbr of your boot hard drive.

as far as I know of, there are a few options

a)
if you're not booted into XP "DIRECTLY" ... meaning it actually entered grub menu.
try keep pressing button "e" or "c"
right after the bios menu (you can just keep pressing it when bios started, since bios don't usually use those two keys)
and it should either let you edit grub entry, or enters into grub command interface.
From that, look online for grub commands and you can boot into Fedora, and you can edit menu.lst from fedora.

b)
use a LiveCD, or installation DVD and enter Rescue Mode , or some shell mode
and edit your menu.lst under "/boot", and you might, or might not want to reinstall grub.

c)
boot into XP, install ... uh ... ext2 IFS into your XP, and then mount your "/boot" on XP
from that point, you can edit your grub's menu.lst



if your computer is actually booting into XP DIRECTLY
your easiest option is to follow option b)


LOL... I totally forgot about telling you to edit the "timeout="
for that someone has already gave an answer

Thanks folks. I'm going to try the live DVD. I feel like I'm taking stupid pills since not only was that not the first thing to enter my head, it simply never occurred to me at all. Me dumb.