Fedora XP dual boot problem

[t_k_t_w]

Hi there,

I have Windows XP installed on my ThinkPad T42, and installed Fedora on the same drive(after freeing up space by resizing C: drive with PartitionMagic). I chose to install Grub on boot partition not on MBR (because I heard of MBR option might cause XP boot failure), and chose XP as default boot target, but after installation completed, I still booted into XP directly without giving me choice to make. Then I used FC rescue CD to boot up the system and tried to set the boot partition (which is /dev/hda3) to bootable and C: drive to non-bootable, this time, when booting the machine I got "Missing Operating System" message.

What should I do to get both systems boot? Any help offered will be truly appreciated. Thank you.

[superbnerd]

what you should have done was install grub on the mbr becuase it is able to boot win and *nix. not exactly sure how to fix things though. but you might start by undoing what yo just did to get xp to boot.

[imdeemvp]

1. you have to install bootloader in MBR..... it is a must if you want to access fc2

2. in your bios change the hard drice mode from AUTO to LBA to see if you access xp again

3. you can fix the mbr from the dos command line, type: fdisk/mbr

[tjmax]

You need to let the FC2 bootloader go into the MBR. The XP boot loader is not in the MBR in on the primary partition of your c drive.
If you have a dos bootable untility disk you can

fdisk /mbr

that will fix your master boot record or if you only have the xp install cd, use that to boot and go into the recover consol It will promt you for the admin PW of your XP install from there you will have a comand prompt, type:

fixmbr

That will replace the MBR of your primary drive and you will boot normally back into XP and you can then try again.

[nigerag]

You don't have to install grub on MBR. Instead, you can intall grub on boot partition and use NT loader to boot Windows and Linux. First of all, using Windows XP bootable CD bring up Recovery Console( choose C-option during Windows setup). After loging on to System partition, enter:
FIXBOOT<ENTER>
FIXMBR<ETNER>
ATTRIB -S -H -R BOOT.INI
EXIT
Boot your Linux, using Fedora Bootable CD or floppy. When first screen shows up, type "linux rescue" without quotes. Follow the directions. At linux comand prompt enter:
dd if=/dev/hda3 bs=512 count=1 of=linux_bs.bin
That will copy the whole block your boot record to the file "linux_bs.bin" If Windows is installed on FAT32 you can copy that file directly to C:\ ( if you mounted that during Linux setup), and edit you boot.ini file. Open boot.ini and add line at the end of the file:
C:\linux_bs.bin="Whatever Name you like for your linux"
If Windows is installed on NTFS, copy linux_bs.bi file to floppy, and after rebooting windows, copy that file from floppy to C:\ and edit boot.ini. It sounds messy, but the whole idea is to copy the linux_bs.bin file to the location, that windows can uderstand, and point NT loader to that location. And again, it seems little messy, the easiest way to install grub on MBR. But at least you know you have a choise.

[imdeemvp]

nigerag,

if he/she is going to use the fedault bootloard from fedora which is the GRUB, it has to be installed in the MBR and that was my point....i was not suggesting a different bootloader to avoid future problems...

[PsyGhost]

I've heard some guys complaining about a damaged partition tables after trying to install grub.
Never happend to me though.

[imdeemvp]

I've heard some guys complaining about a damaged partition tables after trying to install grub.
Never happend to me though.


it happened to me in mandrake 10 community release....hate it! :mad:

and once in fc2 but made changes to the bios and no problems afterwards..... :D

[nigerag]

I've heard some guys complaining about a damaged partition tables after trying to install grub.
Never happend to me though.
It hapened to me also with Mandrake 9.0 and 10.0, but FC2 was able to fix the problem during the setup. ;)

[imdeemvp]

9.00???......i started using 9.1 bamboo