install fedora on second hard drive partition, when booting-no grub-boots win XP pro

vspellen · 01-22-2009, 09:14 PM

I have a 120GB SATA hard drive that is partitioned for Windows XP pro. I added a second 80GB SATA drive and partitioned 15GB and installed Fedora core 4 (had to use skipddc to start install). Installed "everything", install completed successfully. Upon booting the system goes straight into windows. I had selected GRUB for boot loader during install.

I am unable to boot by changing boot order in BIOS - when second HD is selected get ERROR. Using F8 I am not given a choice of HD or OS's.

What are my choices to get my system to dual boot?

yancek · 01-22-2009, 09:44 PM

First off, Fedora Core 4 is pretty old and not supported any longer. When you installed and selected Grub as bootloader, did you elect to have it in the master boot record of the second (80GB) drive? You can set the second drive as first in boot priority? If you can only boot from the first drive, you either need to install Grub to the mbr of the first drive or setup xp to boot Fedora through boot.ini file.

vspellen · 01-22-2009, 10:19 PM

Thank you Yancek, the thing is I am a student taking Network operating Systems using Fedora 4, so I'm kind a stuck with this version. Next, If I am reading you right, I can use the DVD to reinstall GRUB on my C drive without reinstalling Fedora. Is that right?

vspellen · 01-23-2009, 12:49 AM

I just tried reinstalling Fedora making sure that I selected "install boot loader on MBR of sda" (my C drive with XP on it) and still on reboot it starts XP with no GRUB starting.

John VV · 01-23-2009, 02:17 AM

as i recall fedora 4 had a VERY( at the time) new and unstable LVM file system
when you install do a Manual partition layout and DO NOT use that LVM .
you will also be hard pressed to find people that can recall from memory how to do things on a version of fedora that hit" end of life" / died 3 years ago .
this might help , one of the "still up " repos
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...extras/4/i386/
as to getting it to boot
seeing as the MS windows bootloader IS the one working
reinstall and but grub on the FIRST partition of the LINUX drive then use
from the install cd in rescue mode

Code:

chroot /mnt/sysimage 
/* root login */
root
( my password)
mkdir /mnt/windows
mount -t ntfs /dev/sda1 /mnt/windows
dd if=/dev/sd?? of=/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1
/* ?? is where the boot is */
cp /fedora.bin /mnt/windows
/* or run */
dd if=/dev/sd?? of=/mnt/windows/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1
nano /mnt/windows/boot.ini
/* and add    C:\fedora.bin= " Fedora "  
(ctrl+o ) and <enter> to save*/

-- oops fedora 4 has NO ntfs support

Code:

chroot /mnt/sysimage

  open the /mnt directory to open your linux system, now copy the first sector of your /boot

  partition to the current directory with:

  dd if=/dev/hdax of=bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
  dd if=/dev/hdb3 of=linux6.bin bs=512 count=1

  need to copy the bootsect.lnx to C drive, to mount the C drive, make a directory in

  /mnt/windows:

  mkdir /mnt/WinFat

  mount the C drive on /mnt/windows:

  mount -t vfat /dev/hdb1 /mnt/WinFat

  if the file system is ntfs change the vfat(fat 32) to ntfs, to copy run the command:

  cp -fv bootsect.lnx /mnt/windows

  other way is to copy the bootsect.lnx to any removable media like floppy and then to the

  C drive.

vspellen · 01-27-2009, 03:55 PM

I downloaded and installed fedora 10 on the second partition of the second harddrive in my system. I installed grub on the second drive as well. I added windows XP (the entire first hard drive) and windows server 2003 (the first partition of the second HD) to the boot list. In my bios I set the second HD in the boot device list.

Now I can boot fedora 10 BUT when I select xp or server 2003 I get an error message that reads:- NTLDR is missing.

Can someone tell me what to do to correct this.

John VV · 01-27-2009, 07:29 PM

you might want to read through this
"HOWTO Dual Boot Fedora & Windows With NTLoader"
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showth...ighlight=NTLDR

you might want to insert the win xp install cd and run "fixmbr" to reinstall the winXP bootloader to the MBR of the FIRST drive , then make sure that grub is installed in /boot dev/sdb1 on the second drive
use the dd method ( first one in the above post) to make a " fedora10.bin" file .Copy that to the "C://" drive and add fedora to the windows " boot.ini"

yancek · 01-27-2009, 08:23 PM

You have xp (and only xp) on your first hard drive. You have windowss 2003 server on the first partition of the second drive and Fedora on the second partition of the second drive. You installed Grub on the second drive, where? to the root partition? the master boot record? You have entries for xp and w2003 server in your menu.lst file? Not sure what the line below means??

Quote:

In my bios I set the second HD in the boot device list.

Did you put your second hard drive as first in boot priority?
You didn't mention w2003 server earlier, did you just install that?

Fedora is booting Grub and turning booting of xp and windows 2003 server over to the ntldr. The problem is with your windows bootloader and this is a very common problem. If you just installed w2003 server it could have mucked up your bootloader files or maybe you just need an entry for it in your boot.ini file I would suggest you google "NTLDR is missing" or whatever the exact error is. Just had this error on my machine yesterday and there are tons of sites with info on it.

At any rate, with this error, you can play with Fedora and Grub all week and it won't change anything. The error is in the windows bootloader.