Trying to install Fedora Core 3 with XP to dual boot

sabo · 04-14-2005, 11:01 PM

Hi,
Im hoping someone can help me with an installation issue! I was running windows xp pro with sp2 and tried to install Fedora Core 3 so i could dual boot them. I have a IDE Ultra ATA 120GB harddrive which is where xp and all my data is, and i recently bought a SATA 160GB hard drive so i didnt have to partition and i could have more space. I went through the installation and tried to put Fedora onto the second hard drive and i put grub onto the main drive with xp. I set xp to stay as the default os. I thought it was all sweet coz fedora starts up fine (i think - i dont know much about it but it looks ok), BUT xp doesnt boot up anymore. It says it has failed to boot up and gives me the options of:

Safe Mode
Safe Mode with Networking
Safe Mode with Command Promt
Last known Good Configuration of Windows
Start Windows Normally

Everytime i try to boot xp this comes up and when i try to load them, everyone just restarts the computer before anything loads up!
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get XP to boot properly without having to reinstall it completely?? I dont want to have to reinstall xp and fedora because it seems im so close to having them both work!
Any help at all out be very appreciated
Cheers
Sab

sabo · 04-14-2005, 11:47 PM

or perhaps someone can tell me how is the easiest way (for a windows user) to access my windows hard drive from linux and back that up on my linux hard drive?? That way i might be able to just reinstall xp. Please help! Anyone!
Thanks

masonm · 04-14-2005, 11:53 PM

Are you sure you installed Linux to the second drive and not over top of Xp on the first drive?
Please post your bootloader config file. If lilo, it's /etc/lilo.conf if grub it's /boot/grub/menu.lst

Also wouldn't hurt to post your /etc/fstab

sabo · 04-15-2005, 12:00 AM

ok ill go home and try to find that and post it(gotta go to the library to try use the computers coz i also dont know how to get my dial up modem working on linux yet

). Id just look in the "my computer" type of thing to find it yeah? Sorry i have no idea
ill have a look
thanks

techguru9 · 04-15-2005, 07:02 AM

I also encountered with the same problem. I had winXp and Linux together, which were booted seperately. Lately, I installed Grub so that I can dual-boot. I am able to boot into Linux with Grub now. But, XP completely stopped working for me. I tried with a recovery console in XP, which didn't help either.

My machine configuration:

AMD 2000XP, 128MB RAM, 40GB HDD.

I also would greatly appreciate getting a solution for this issue.

Thanks,
Jomy

ravee · 04-15-2005, 07:15 AM

Maybe this link might help.

http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2004/1...0-and-red.html

houdelou · 04-15-2005, 08:04 AM

Maybe you could try to install lilo instead of grub as a boot loader. I had this kind of problem once with grub. Presently, I have a dual boot system with Linux and XP SP2.

But first you could try to repair grub. Here is a link on how to repair it on FC. Sometimes, it is just because the MBR got corrupted.

http://www.sorgonet.com/linux/grubrestore/

Knurpht · 04-15-2005, 08:17 AM

I had the same problem with SuSE and GRUB i thought. SuSE was booting fine via GRUB, no XP. Running SuSE from version 7.0 i had already mounted my windows partitions, so i could see that everything was still there. Made a copy of the entire Documents and Settings folder, and than followed a post at SuSE's portal that suggested to either change the hardrive BIOS setting to LBA or from LBA if already set. Everything's working fine since then.
I used this lousy solution on several machines, various distributions always wiht xp. Lousy, because i never found a proper explanation.

Hope this works for you too

techguru9 · 04-15-2005, 08:28 AM

Initiallly, Anaconda had screwed up the Grub installation due to some reason. Later, I re-installed Grub on MBR, after which Linux booting started working. But, WinXP had gone for a toss.

I tried fixmbr in windows rescue mode. But it screwed up windows booting. (There was a warning at the end of fixmbr output, saying that it works only on X86 based machines. Any way to get this to work for an AMD?).

So, the Grub is installed in MBR now. And Linux is booting fine. Any way to fix windows installation without losing the data?

PTrenholme · 04-15-2005, 10:04 AM

Look, none of you have posted a copy of your GRUB configuration file. FYI, here's mine:

Code:

$ sudo cat /boot/grub/grub.conf | grep ^[^#]
default=0
timeout=7
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp)
        root (hd1,1)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp) no rhgb, run level 3
        root (hd1,1)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp ro 3 root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
        initrd /initrd-2.6.11-1.14_FC3smp.img
title Fedora Core (2.6.10-1.770_FC3smp)
        root (hd1,1)
        kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.10-1.770_FC3smp ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
        initrd /initrd-2.6.10-1.770_FC3smp.img
title Windows
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        chainloader +1

Note the last three lines. Those let me boot to the XP/NT boot.ini menu, where I can boot to any of the Windows systems on my drives (except W98, which requires a boot from my BIOS, since it's not on /dev/hd0).

garnica · 04-15-2005, 10:08 AM

I can tell you of an ugly hack if you want to solve your dual boot problem quickly. It is almost sure you'll get it right in no time, although if you want to learn how and why this is done, it can take a whole more lot of time.

In essence, it's a two-step process:

a.- kill current boot settings and restore windows boot settings
b.- restore linux boot settings which will include the new windows boot settings

a:
There is an, as far as i know, undocumented feature in the win98 system boot disk. It doesn't matter whether or not you have winxp or other flavour installed. Just boot up with the said boot disk in the drive and wait for the command prompt. Once you're there, type: fdisk /mbr

That will detect windoze boot settings and will fix them so that, if as has been said before, your xp install is not damaged, you will be able to boot it again. Just remove the disk from the drive and type ctl+alt+sup. Your machine will restart and you will recover your windows automatically.

b:
Of course, that will destroy the lilo or grub settings. You will have then to restore grub to your machine, but that's easy.
I understand you have been directed where to look to restore your grub/lilo settings. That is easy with your Linux installation CDs.

I believe, you'll be back in no time with a dual boot machine.

Cheers.

techguru9 · 04-15-2005, 10:10 AM

Ok. Here is the full list of checks that I had run.

Code:

Command : fdisk -l
====================
Disk /dev/hda: 40GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sector/track, 4865 cylinders

Units = Cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device          Boot    Start   End             Blocks          Id              System

/dev/hda1         *             1               1275    10241406        c               Win95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/hda2                       1276    4864    28828642+       f               Win95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5                       1276    3825    20482843+       7               HPFS / NTFS
/dev/hda6                       3826    4798    7815591         83              Linux
/dev/hda7                       4799    4863    522081          82              Linux swap

Code:

FileName : /boot/grub/grub.conf
===============================
default = 0
timeout = 10
splashimage = (hd0,5)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title   Linux RH9.0
                root (hd0,5)
                kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.20-8 ro root=/dev/hda6 rhgb
                initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.20-8.img

title   Windows XP
                rootnoverify (hd0,0)
                chainloader +1

Code:

Results of GRUB installation on to MBR
================================
grub> setup (hd0)

Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists....... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists....... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists....... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"....... 16 sectors are embedded
succeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0) 1+16 p (hd0,2)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf....... succeded
Done

Hope this one will give some pointer.

rmakers · 04-15-2005, 10:43 AM

I had a problems a little bit like yours w/ win xp and mandrake, I could get into winxp maybe once out 12 boot up or so, then I defreged my windows drive and all was better, but youd hafta get into windows once first...so I doubt this info will help...just an idea though, I'm not sure if there a defrag utility out there somewhere that would run off of some sort of bootable disk.

marcosdumay · 04-15-2005, 12:55 PM

Quote:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)

Shouldn't that be the folowing?

Code:

rootnoverify (hd0,1)

techguru9 · 04-16-2005, 07:15 AM

But, my windows installation is in hda1, which is nothing but (hd0,0). Anyway, I had tried whatever you have suggested also. :-)