Failed to boot FC5 after dual install

[silvio]

Dual boot problems, I think

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Hi,

I'm very new to the linux world but got interested because of my satellite receiver. I bought FC5 DVD from a dedicated website. I have an AMD-Sempron 3000+ with 756Mb of ram and 2 Hard drives. An 80Gb with WinXp and the 20Gb where I invane tried to install FC5.
Installation went ok, although Grub was skipped during install. I tried to upgrade and chose to install on /boot, as suggested by many posts. The pc always went to XP.

I then did as suggested in a post by TOPA on this same forum. http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sh...perating+system

Now I have a "dual" boot menu but when I select Linux I{ just get a black screen with the DOS cursor on the tope left hand corner. No HDD access. Nothing.

So I tried to follow some more advice from posts. I tried fdisk -l and got, I had to type this:
Disk /dev/hda: 82.3GB, 82348277760 Bytes 255 Heads, 63 sectors/track 10011 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065*512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 10010 80405293+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/hda: 82.3GB, 82348277760 Bytes 255 Heads, 63 sectors/track 10011 cylinders
units = cylinders of 16065*512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 * 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/hdb2 14 2491 19904535 8e Linux VM

I also tried grub-install /dev/hdb and got "/dev/hdb does not have any corresponding BIOS drive" for an answer.

Then I tried grub-install --recheck /dev/hdb and got the following:
Probing devices to guess Bios Drives.......
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map
Check if correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect, fix it and rerun the script 'grub-install'

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdb

But now I still get the blank screen with the flashing underline cursor only. Any ideas what I could be messing up please?

[Seve]

Hello:
From what you have posted and assuming that you had Windows installed before FC5: boot from the FC5 install disc and choose F5 and type linux rescue, enter and follow along with the on-screen instructions until you get to the last prompt. Then type chroot /mnt/sysimage enter, then type grub-install --recheck /dev/hda enter, type exit enter type exit and reboot and you should be good to go.
hth
Seve

[SHtRO]

I had to do something similar for a dual boot install on an older box as well. The grub-install failed with the aforementioned "BIOS drive" error, but I was able to run the grub shell and setup from there. It was quite weird, and a little disconcerting, but once it was installed from the grub shell everything worked fine.

Initially GRUB never installed and the FC5 installer gave no indication of that. It would just boot to windows. Then I installed grub and it wouldn't give me my proper boot options. That's when I did it manually from the GRUB shell and all worked out.

Future kernel upgrades did not have this problem because once GRUB knew where to look (/boot) for the grub.conf file, that was all that needed updating in the future.

[silvio]

Originally Posted by Seve

Hello:
From what you have posted and assuming that you had Windows installed before FC5: boot from the FC5 install disc and choose F5 and type linux rescue, enter and follow along with the on-screen instructions until you get to the last prompt. Then type chroot /mnt/sysimage enter, then type grub-install --recheck /dev/hda enter, type exit enter type exit and reboot and you should be good to go.
hth
Seve

Thank you Seve!
Managed to boot in FC. Writing this message from it. The only thing for now is that it went directly to FC5 instead of giving me any options to boot in windows or Fedora. Any more useful tips, please?

[SHtRO]

Make certain your "/etc/grub.conf" reflects the Windows partition.

If it does, read "info grub" and check out the details of setup. I had to do a manual setup in a situation very similar to your own.

If it doesn't it will have to be configured. Mine looks something like this:

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

You may have to run 'setup' from the grub shell regardless.

[Seve]

Originally Posted by silvio

Thank you Seve!
Managed to boot in FC. Writing this message from it. The only thing for now is that it went directly to FC5 instead of giving me any options to boot in windows or Fedora. Any more useful tips, please?

Hello:
The following is what you need to do.

Originally Posted by SHtRO

Make certain your "/etc/grub.conf" reflects the Windows partition.

If it does, read "info grub" and check out the details of setup. I had to do a manual setup in a situation very similar to your own.

If it doesn't it will have to be configured. Mine looks something like this:
Code:

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

Once you have it set up then please visit this site to complete your install of FC5 http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html
If you have problems post back.
Cheers
Seve

[silvio]

Thanks Seve,

I was so excited to see a different booting screen that I didn't notice the countdown timer! When I restarted I noticed it and managed to stop it and boot into windows. Afterall the menu was there. It just said Fedora Core 5 and Others. Now I need to find the commands to change the time to a bigger number or swap the drive boot order. I will follow your lead. Thanks again.

[silvio]

Can you please explain what "reflects windows partition" means when referrring to Grub? I managed to edit the grub.conf and change the amount of time from 5 to 30 seconds, changed the entry Other to Windows XP. I also noticed that the XP entry had noverify or something like that and also chainloader+1. The FC entry had different things.

Do I just switch them over, ie, put the Windows entries the first or do I have to change some of the text in the conf file?

Thanks again