GRUB problems with FC6

[HuberUAE]

Dear Forum members,

I'm an absolute newbie on Fedora - please don't laugh about my problem.

P4 PC with 2 x 80 GB HDD installed. On drive 1 a WIN 2000 Prof. installation (FAT) with 2 partitions, drive 2 exclusiively for FC6. Whatever I am trying, GRUB does not install correctly - the PC is booting this bloody WIN instantly. Do I need a special parition on dive 1 for the MBR, or can I install GRUB on drive 2 directly? Any other advices?

Any answer will be most welcome.

Thanks a lot!

Huber UAE

[bob]

Here's one method I've used that keeps everything neat: http://jimlawrnc.mine.nu/mywiki/DualBootLinux

[sideways]

If you install GRUB on the 2nd hardrive you need to set this to be the first booted in your bios, otherwise only windows will boot. Grub should give you an option to boot into windows (It's called 'Other' by default).

Alternatively just install GRUB on the first hardrive /dev/hda (or /dev/sda for a sata drive), no special configuration is needed, the anaconda installer is very kind to windows and sets grub up to give you the option to boot into it (whereas the windows installer just writes over the mbr without even checking if grub is there - bad boy gates)

see this thread for instructions if you don't want to reinstall
http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=146161


EDIT
bob, that is a tidy (and very clear) solution!

[HuberUAE]

Dear Bob,

thank you very much for your reply - now I am half way through....

The Grub.conf is now as following:

title Windows 2000 Professional
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash-xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinux-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img

The boot loader menu appears (grub is stored on the Linux drive), but chosing Windows will result in the following error message:

Booting 'Windows 2000 Professional'
map.... (see above)

default=0

Error 27=Unrecognized commend

Please press....

Do you have any idea what is going wrong? Anything else is configured as described in your excellent reply.

Thank you very much for your help!

HuberUAE

[sideways]

try rewriting grub.conf like this

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash-xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Windows 2000 Professional
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
title Fedora Core (2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinux-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.img

[bob]

I wonder if there's a hidden partition on the Windows drive. Just for fun, stop the boot at the grub menu and highlight the Windows boot info, then type 'e' for edit. Then, change the 'rootnoverify (hd1,0)' to 'rootnoverify (hd1,1)' , hit 'enter' to save the change and 'b' to try and boot it. Don't worry about screwing things up, since it only affects this one boot try. If successful, you'll have to modify your grub.conf to make it permanent.

If that's not the fix, perhaps Sideways can help you a bit more if you post the results of 'fdisk -l' (that's the lower-case "L"). You can get that by going into FC and opening a terminal, signing in as full root (su -)...yes, the space and minus sign are important... and then 'fdisk -l' which will give all the partitions on both drives and hopefully show a "*" where the boot partition is for Windows.

You didn't say if you followed Jim's 'how-to' on setting up both drives, but if you did you also can boot Windows by going into the bios and switching the boot order so that the Windows bootloader comes up instead of grub. If you've overwritten the Windows mbr, that's not going to work.

Confused? Well, then I've done my job! :D

[HuberUAE]

Great, Sideways,

now it works perfectly.

Thank you very much to all you guys for your precious help!

Huber UAE