Computer with 2 IDE drives (hda, hdb). WinXP installed on hda, have had Ubuntu running w/o problems on hdb, with grub installed on the MBR of hda. Just installed FC5 from CD on hdb; had the FC5 installation wipe hdb, format it, and partition it. Installation went flawlessly until the reboot at the completion of installation. When it boots, it comes back with the following and then stops:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.
GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15

I have reinstalled Ubuntu 5.10, again to hdb and with grub on the MBR of hda. System now at least boots back into WinXP without issue.

I have used these same FC5 CDs to install on one other computer without any problems, so I don't think this is a problem with the CDs themselves. It certainly seems like it is an issue with how grub is being installed.

Any ideas on how to get FC5 installed on the 2nd HD and to have it actually work to boot (and ideally, dual boot) would be most welcome!

Thanks...

Did you reinstall GRUB when doing FC5? if not the GRUB entry is probably invalid, boot into either Linux systems and use grub-install to reinstall, it should pick up all bootable partitions, or use the FC5 Rescue CD

Bad data, maybe partition size or something. Do as i said above, reinstall GRUB to the MBR after all your OS' are installed

http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html GRUB error messages

ethics,

Thanks for the response. Even before reading your response, I had come across guidance along these same lines on one of the Fedora forums. I booted from the first CD and went into rescue mode. Ran the following commands:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub-install --recheck /dev/hda
exit
exit

At that point, the system rebooted, and successfully went through the rest of the installation. I thought I was fat, dumb, and happy. And indeed I was until I went to boot WinXP the first time. Grub throws the following messages:

Booting 'Microsoft Windows XP'
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
Grub Loading stage1.5
Grub loading, please wait...
Error 18

and it just sits. Prior to this, I have been able to quickly reinstall Ubuntu and get back to the point where I can still boot WinXP again. No joy this time. Ubuntu's installation didn't pick up the presence of WinXP on hda. Once under Ubuntu, I have tried to mount the first drive as an NTFS file system, but it doesn't recognize it as such.

With any luck, all that has been clobbered is the first part of the disk and I will be able to get it back...

Clearly, there is something there that FC5 does not understand about how to interact with my 2 HDs, which is weird because I haven't had trouble with any of the various distros I have tried (successfully, I might add) on this particular box, always installing either grub (or in the distant past) lilo to the MBR of that first HD.

Any ideas on how to get my first HD, the WinXP disk, back to the point Windows runs and I can grab all of my files off of, would be most welcome at this point...

Sigh...

I have the same problem and I am not too techy but I think my MBR is gone or screwed. How do I correct this?

Use the Fedora rescue disk and reinstall it. I've never done this myself but the process has been described in this forum several times.

"Any ideas on how to get FC5 installed on the 2nd HD and to have it actually work to boot (and ideally, dual boot) would be most welcome!"

Even when it had been a lot of time since first thread this may become in handy. I had certainly learned the hard way about a broken grub, and most likely noobs (as I) will become in to struggle with this, so, the very first recommendation is widely know: "make a back up". Anyway, winxp MBR doesn´t like to share with linux, and that is the reason (mainly) that we have to use grub or lilo, anyway, if your grub broke, and you wan to to fix your winxp OS MBR (then you can try to reinstall your linux OS) do this: get your winxp OS cd, booted, and run repair mode, it will ask you your admin pass, so, (in some OEM it is set to just "enter" the blank), then when you get your DOS terminal type "fixMBR" and your winxp MBR will come back (and so your winxp OS), of course linux will be gone (not "actually" gone, but it is inaccessible since there is not grub). Of course you should try FC recovery first. WARNING: if you use a Dell model wich have a Symantech System Recovery (kind of Ghost) this is not your solution!!! since this systems have a fixed MBR. If this is your case check: www dot goodells dot net/dellrestore/index.htm

I ran into many of the same problems.
Just for another approach, I am writing this.

I found one solution that does NOT mess up my windows instalation If you are running Linux on a second hard drive.

First in my BIOS I set the windows hard drive to boot SECOND, and the HD I will be using for Linux to boot FIRST.

I then install the desired flavor of Linux, and have Grub install on that hard drive.

At this point Grub will not load windows, since Windows must be on the first boot drive, but here is the fix.

Boot into Fedora (or another distro) and find your grub.conf file. In Fedora Core 5 this is in
/boot/grub/grub.conf

use your text editor to open it as root

you will probly see something like this

# 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 (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdc
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.16-1.2133_FC5)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.16-1.2133_FC5.img
title other
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1


change the title other section to this

title WINDOWS
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
boot

the commands map (hd0) (hd1), and map (hd1) (hd0) swaps the hard drives so that now hd1 is first(0, zero) and hd0 is now second (1, one). Remember Linux is on hd0 according to BIOS.

This little edit keeps grub on the linux hard drive, and boots windows without modifying anything on the Windows Hard Drive.


Hope this helps others who may stumble on this thread.

I know how important it is to post success stories about errors and this is my first post on here after needing to read tons of error solving threads.

I had installed Debian about 30 times with no success in getting it to identify my hardware correctly, so I downloaded FC5 and installed it.

I was installing it to HDB (my second HD where debian had been) next to my boot drive HDA (holding WindowsXP and the old grub loader from debian).

It installed okay, but when I restarted it said Grub 1.5 loading please wait... Error 15

After finding this thread I fixed the problem. I rebooted the pc with the FC5 DVD in the drive and hit F5 to load rescue mode.

This gave me no errors and so I rebooted. When my pc restarted it said "Loading Fedora Core 5 in 2 seconds..." It successfully booted into FC5 but I was worried that WindowsXP was missing as another poster had found out. No worries though... when you see the above message, press a key to get to the Grub menu... then you SHOULD see your WindowsXP installation.

(Please note I didnt have to change the HDs around or the boot order or anything thankfully).

Old thread but Duster's post helped me solve my problem.

I installed a second hdd on my dual-boot (Debian, XP). I thought I'd keep the XP and my separate /home and did a fresh Debian on my new hdd, where I also put a separate grub-partiton (Grub in MBR pointing to that partition). After tinkering around a bit I managed to get it to boot nicely from the separate grub and it loaded both Debian installs without a hitch (I wanted to keep my old until I got my new going 100%) but XP wouldn't load. Re-arranging boot-order on the hdd and changing menu.lst in the separate grub accordingly did the trick.

Now, I'm just gonna set up my new new install before I start using all that extra space from the old install for some nice, shared hdd-space using acl.

Thanks
/CZ

rps

not sure if you query has been answered so I will waffle on and you choose which idea you like the most

options
1) bios boots to xp....xp bootloader is amended to allow for linux to be in xp menu
2) bios boots to linux...linux bootloader menu amended to allow for xp in menu
3) bootloader for xp not touched...if you want to boot xp bios set to boot xp drive first
....(problably re-install grub into linux drive) and to boot linux bios set to boot linux

options 1 & 2 and in my signature

I just want to make it clear about Grub Error 15 with multiple disks on a machine. I had grub installed properly (info grub) and boot flag set to my /boot (or "/" partition if you don't have a separate /boot partition) partition (fdisk -l /dev/sda; look for "*"). However the BIOS only listed my second disk (dev/sdb) and I got Error 15 (if your disk with the "*" IS listed in the BIOS boot drives, then you are probably fine, even if it is not first). Elsewhere in the BIOS I found the hard drive listing and altered the order of drives. The BIOS then was looking at the drive which had the boot flag and grub booted without errors. Beware that some BIOS might switch your drive once listed as /dev/sda to /dev/sdb if you reorder (a good reason to use LABEL= in /etc/fstab instead of device names (e2label;blkid).

Regardless of your operating system, the boot flag must be on the partition containing the primary bootloader you are using (and other bootloaders can be daisy-chained from that; plenty of instructions on the web). --RoyBoy626