Fedora vista dual boot

[rogerbn]

Can some one give me the instructions on how to install Fedora 9 on to a secondary drive.
The reason for asking.

I have a primary drive already with vista installed on it. Then a secondary drive that I’m trying to install Fedora 9 on. I have ran the install and have ran into a couple of errors already. One which is the grub hard rive error. The other is the startup:
"
Grub Loading stage 1.5.
Error 21

I had to use the rescue disk to modify the grub.conf file and remove the hidden menu to see that error. I can not remember how I was able to get the error 21. ( I think it is when I fixed the MBR and it started to boot to vista i removed the hidden menu out of the grub.conf file. I have check the grub install and verified that it is installed. I then tried to reinstall on top of it again. Once I did that it went back to the Grub hard drive error.

PS

I have no Idea what I'm doing and everything I have done is only because I have found some information on the net about. Some of the Pages that I usedOne paged that I tried to get help from (http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-fix-dual-boot-windows-vista-linux.html) Another one was on this forum that I printed out and tried and wish I could find it again. I will have to go home and see what it is call.
Pc specs: Amd 64 5600, NVIDIA 6600, LAN on board, Board is a Asus M2N-E I built the system my self. I have vista Ultimate 64 bit on. I have two drives both are sata. I have the main drive wich is a Wd hard drive 300gb and the other a maxtor 100. I have the wd as the main drive that is partition into two partitions. One for windows and the other for files. The Maxtor is all for the Linux.

[rogerbn]

Does anyone know of website or something at all?

[CraigWatson]

Try using EasyBCD (http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1) from Neosmart to configure the Vista bootloader to look for Fedora (EasyBCD includes Grub and installs it on your Vista partition).

My tri-boot setup is documented on my blog here: http://www.cwatson.org/blog/2008/02/04/multi-booting-a-revised-guide-xpvistalinux/

[rogerbn]

I will check that out when I get home in a bit. I have viewed the BCD but was unable to find it loaded. I will use this program that you have mentioned.

[rbn14]

What exactly did you do? (ie. installed vista, then installed fedora then ran fixmbr, etc). Are you booting into windows with grub or chainloading grub from windows? Error 21 means "cant find disk". Answer those questions and we can start walking through what needs to be done.

[CraigWatson]

As far as I understand it, the OP has GRUB installed on the main boot drive (sda) and Fedora installed on sdb. Assuming the Vista installation is on sda1 and Fedora is on sdb1, the menu.lst file should look like the following:

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora
root (hd1,0)
[ ... whatever is already there goes here - it'll change depending on your kernel ... ]
title Vista
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


Uncomment the "hiddenmenu" line if you want it to be hidden :)

[rbn14]

I think you are right, in which case what you said to do is spot on.
rogerbn, just so you get a better idea of what is going on the part of the menu.lst file your changing is (hd1,0) which is probably currently (hd0,0) Grub starts counting drives at 0 so (hd0,0) is first drive first partition, (hd1,0) is second drive first partition, etc. Depending on how you installed things you may have to edit the /etc/fstab also.

[zmpike]

If you are looking for a web site here (http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/) is the link to the grub documentation.

Reading the 'GRUB image file' section(sect 10) will help you understand what is happening. Stage 1.5 is where your file system gets loaded. I would suspect that rbn14 is right and you have an incorrect device specified, such as (hd0,0), in your linux section of your grub config, and grub can't find the proper file system to load to be able to read that partition(because that partition is NTFS). If that doesn't solve your problem, maybe post your grub.conf

[rogerbn]

:confused: Well after doing the easy bcd and add the neo linux to the boot record it started to come up with a prompt that said grub then allowed me to type after it. I have never played with Linux before so I have no idea what is going on. I have messed with the grub.conf and moved some of the files when I was getting the error 21 but that did not resolve the issue. So far add the linux to the boot up did the most that I could see. Does any one know the point that I’m at now. I am going to get a book and read up on linux when I get paid but appreciate all the help now until then. :confused:

[zmpike]

error 21 : Selected disk does not exist. This error is returned if the device part of a device- or full file name refers to a disk or BIOS device that is not present or not recognized by the BIOS in the system.

See: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-grub/2003-02/msg00082.html
as a possible fix, if not, try posting your grub.conf

[rogerbn]

can any one answer the new question after the mbr was updated?

[rbn14]

People have tried to help but you are not answering any of our questions.
1. Explain in what order you installed Fedora and Vista.
2. post the results of "fdisk -l"
3. post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

After that we can walk you through what to do.

[CraigWatson]

The easiest thing to do at this point is to try to install the bootloader from scratch.

Boot to the Fedora Installation CD and select the Recovery mode. When you find yourself at a command prompt, type grub to move into GRUB, then enter the following:

setup(hd0)

That will rewrite GRUB to the MBR of your first hard drive. You can then modify your menu.lst file by doing the following:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

From what you have already posted, your first hard drive (with Vista on it) will be /dev/sda1 and hd(0,0), and your second hard drive (with Fedora on it) will be /dev/sdb1 and hd(1,0). Modify your menu.lst file to look like the example I posted before.

After that, reboot and you should have GRUB appearing when you first boot, and you should also have two options - Fedora and Vista. Check to make sure that each OS boots fully.

[rogerbn]

Craig thanks for the reply I will try them when I get home tonight. I hope that I have to load to the recovery and then a just typw in
chroot /mnt/sysimage
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

As mention before new to linux.
People have tried to help but you are not answering any of our questions.
1. Explain in what order you installed Fedora and Vista.
2. post the results of "fdisk -l" ---------> what is this and how do I do it. New to Linux.
3. post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file. --------> what is this and how do I do it. New to Linux.

For the correct response the correct question has to be asked.

[rbn14]

fdisk -l
Is a command that shows all the detected partitions and what type thay are. I wanted you to post the results of using that command.
/boot/grub/menu.lst
is a the grub configuration file. It is the file that Craig posted earlier.

That said, I understand you are new to Linux but those are two things you could have easily figured out for yourself with a couple of searches. I dont mean to sound like a jerk if I do. I'm just saying that a big part of learning linux is searching the internet.

[rogerbn]

:cool: Sorry all that it has been so long since I have done anything on the computer. I have focused most of my attention to my 4 month old daughter. Craig I tired what you advised with the reinstall of the grub and recieved an error 12. :cool: