First Time User - Grub / boot problems

[Caileb]

Greetings,

I don't really have any Linux experience. But I wanted to try it out. Now I'm afraid I did not set this up properly. Grub gives me 3 options:

Fedora (2.6.38.8-32.fc15.x86_64)
Fedora (2.6.38.8-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64)
Other

When I select <Other> to boot into windows... it starts to try to boot... but then flashes a quick blue screen & restarts. I tried to boot into Window's normal mode, safe mode, and command line... all just restart :(

fdisk -l gives the following:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc7a8f4e4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 3074047 1536000 27 Hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 3074048 412674047 204800000 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 466339840 488396799 11028480 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 412674048 466339839 26832896 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 412676096 413700095 512000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 413702144 466339839 26318848 8e Linux LVM

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_swap: 3388 MB, 3388997632 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 412 cylinders, total 6619136 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_swap doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root: 23.6 GB, 23555211264 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2863 cylinders, total 46006272 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Disk /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root doesn't contain a valid partition table

And cat /boot/grub/grub.conf gives the following:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,4)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
# initrd /initrd-[generic-]version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,4)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.38.8-32.fc15.x86_64)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.38.8-32.fc15.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.38.8-32.fc15.x86_64.img
title Fedora (2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64)
root (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64 ro root=/dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_root rd_LVM_LV=VolGroup/lv_swap rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /initramfs-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.x86_64.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

I'd like to boot back into Windows.
Any help would be greatly appreciated :(

[stoat]

Since /dev/sda1 is still marked as the active partition, I would try changing grub.conf to target that for Windows. It may not be the Windows partition, but it may have the Windows boot loader files.title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1Anyway, it won't hurt anything to try. You also can change "Other" to whatever you want to appear in the boot menu.

[Caileb]

Thank you for the reply.

I changed it (hd0, 0)

And booted. It gave me a slightly different menu, asking to Start Normally or repair. When I selected it to start normally it did the same thing... and just restarted. I tried repairing, was unable to fix the issue...

And now I'm not able to boot into Fedora :(

*EDIT*
When booting into Fedora now... the screen just is blue with the F. And never finishes booting up.

[stoat]

Try booting the other Fedora kernel.

[Caileb]

Tried booting into both - both restarted.

What is the difference between the two?

I think the problem was with how Fedora partitioned my drive prior to the install. It gave an odd error.. I tried it again, and it had installed.

---------------

But right now this is more trouble than it's worth. I'm currently re-installing my Windows setup (using that to partition my disks before anything gets installed). I'll keep you updated on my progress.

(Thanks for the help, btw)

---------- Post added at 02:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:23 PM ----------

Ok. I wiped everything off my disk. Deleted all my partitions and formatted.

I installed Windows 7 without a problem. Kept about ~30 GB on my disk for my Fedora partition. Now I can't even boot into it.

It displays a bunch of text:

...
Started D-Bus System Message Bus
Started Machine Check Exception Logging Daemon
Started Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack.ting Tool

And it just freezes :-/

I attempted to boot into this 3 different times. It froze there the first time, the 2nd time... had crazy colors... and it frooze there the 3rd time.

---------- Post added at 04:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:54 PM ----------

Really odd.

Burned a 2nd disk - and verified data.
Same issue.

Decided to burn a 3rd disk so I downloaded the DVD-ISO. This got a bit further along in the install. But this froze at "Starting Installation Process"

Not sure what else to try.

---------- Post added at 05:13 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:11 PM ----------

Alright.

Tried to re-install from the DVD-ROM... and on the 3rd try - it installed correctly.