Grub Not Loading, Windows XP Loading Directly After Installing Fedora Core 4

mitsotos · #1 20th September 2005, 06:26 AM

Hi,

I am fairly new at this (i am sure many ppl say this), but i have installed Redhat Linux ( on my laptop before. But i just bought a new Dell Dimension 4700 a few months back. I decided to install Fedore Core 4 on it, so i bought a new 160 gb serial ATA harddrive and installed Fedora. Everything went well (except i had to use the text install since the graphic install wasn't working with me) but when i rebooted the computer it went directly to Windows XP without loading Grub. now i have tried installing grub on the MBR and the first sector of the harddisk and they both don't work. i even tried installing grub from the rescue option using grub-install /dev/sda or b but that didn't work.. i got an error that i forgot to copy down. Any help would be greatly appreciated, and if you need any extra information just ask me, just please be patient and explain to me how to get the information you are asking for...

Thanks in Advance,
St. Psycho

Seve · #2 20th September 2005, 07:28 AM

Hi:

Boot from the Rescue disc or if you don't have a Resuce disc then boot from the CD1 install disc and type linux rescue
At the prompt, type:

chroot/mnt/sysimage

then type:

grub-install /dev/sda --recheck
[asuming from your post that /dev/sda/ is the correct drive]
hit the return and reboot

hth

Seve

mitsotos · #3 21st September 2005, 02:37 AM

Thanx alot seve.

now grub is loading and Fedora starts to laod. i get to enabling swap... and the it just freezes there... then my monitor gives me the following message "Cannot display this video mode". I am guessing it is a problem with the graphical mode (since it didn't work when i was trying to install fedora) so how can i start fedora in text mode, and fix this problem ?

St Psycho

Seve · #4 21st September 2005, 03:41 AM

Hi:

This is what I would do, others may well have better suggestions / solutions.

When you reboot hit enter at the Grub Screen enter e to edit the boot commands [you will see the instructions on the screen, which you should look at since I am going from my failing memory here]
-------> at the end of the line that says FC4 kernel xxxxx type linux 3 hit enter to continue the boot process.
this will boot you to level 3 [no XServer running]

At the command line: login as root, type init 5 or startx hit enter to see if you can start the Xserver? If it somehow starts...hooray, if it can't it will /should indicate so and ask if you want configure it now? Just say yes and follow along and let it do it's thing and see if it can get by the video mode error that you are experiencing. If X starts then you can install the correct video drivers for your hardware.

Alternatively, since you have Grub more or less configured you could reboot with the CD1 install disk and to a re-install it should not alter the Grub installation afaik.

I am not familiar with Dell desktops, however, before you try a re-install try to get into the BIOS and set everything to "fail-safe defaults" save and exit. That is if you can enter the BIOS on your machine.

BTW what kind of monitor and video card do you have?

hth

Seve