[gorebrush]

It is, 2:25am

I've been at this thing for a while. I am in need of help. A lot of it.

The system: -

Athlon 64 3200

The setup: -

1 x 120Gb Hard disk, 1 x 160Gb hard disk.

We can forget about the 160Gb hard disk though, it's not concerned here.



On the 120Gb disk, I have the following.

10Gb NTFS Partition (with WinXP on it)
10Gb Linux (8Gb ext3 / 2Gb swap)
90Gb NTFS Partition (sitting inside an extended partition. Again, this is not considered)

What I've managed to do (or at least I think i've done) is had Windows XP installed on the first 10gb with no problems. Then, I decided to take the 2nd 10Gb, and install Fedora Core 2 on it.

Once i'd installed it all, I booted up the computer into Grub, and had 2 options.

Fedora Core 2.blah blah (the version number)
Other

Where I would THINK other is my WinXP partition.

When I try and use the other option, i get a black dos type screen with the following on it

Booting other...

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Then nothing.

Fedora has been working fine. But since then and now, i managed to screw up 2 fedora installations, and i even tried the FIXMBR command from the Windows XP CD. Still no Windows.

So i've got Fedora, and i KNOW the NTFS partitions are ok (i've mounted them in Linux and checked that all the data is ok)

So how on earth do i get my Windows XP partition working again??

I have included my grub.conf below, perhaps it may be of use. Beware I am a total n00b to linux, but not to Windows and Computers themselves, I have 14 years of DOS/Windows experience

Thanks
David

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,2)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hda3
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358)
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

[tsunam]

*edit* Welcome to the board btw *end edit*

Fedora core 2 is very very screwed up when it comes to dual boot of windows and linux. Thats the blunt of it

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/4911 Here is a article about the issue, and a response from a developer. Also it gives a link to the former article. Sorry that i don't have better news. linuxquestions fedora forum or linuxiso fedora forums might have something about a way around it. Let me take a look around but the short answer is not a good situation

http://slashdot.org/articles/04/05/2...id=110&tid=187 <--also a slashdot article about it.

[Whiteskin]

Yeah... FC2 kinda has these growing pains. One of which includes nuking your partition table. I'd back up the important stuff to cd, and then go to another distro until they resolve this.

[tsunam]

Debian

Apparently Mandrake 10.0 has the issue as well from what i read. interesting. I haven't heard much about that yet though.

[Squashman]

Boot into Linux and logon as root. Do a fdisk -l from a shell prompt. Post that info back here.

[tsunam]

Try this for the other

root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

see if that works for you, thats what my grub config is on the laptop

[Squashman]

Originally Posted by tsunam

Try this for the other

root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

see if that works for you, thats what my grub config is on the laptop

I just noticed that myself as well. Not sure if the makeactive will make the difference or not.

[tsunam]

yeah that's why i went and looked at mine. IT should make a difference, if i remember it did for me. since the chainloader just passes it to the windows loader to do its thing.

[gorebrush]

Thanks for the responses guys. It looks like im going to have to be doing what i didnt want to do (reinstall windows)



Never mind

[gorebrush]

oh btw

Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120000000000 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 232514 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 21229 10699258+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 42458 232497 95779530 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda3 21230 38297 8602272 83 Linux
/dev/hda4 38298 42456 2096136 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda5 42458 232497 95779498+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

[gorebrush]

Right, next day.

I've been out all day, and have been at a friends house, and just decided to pop on the internet to see if i can find a solution to my problem. In my research (thanks to the guys who've put links on here), i've dug around and found this link...

http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2.html

and some other threads have been useful as well.

I'm currently 75 minutes from home, so hopefully when i get back i'll be able to have a look

cheers again
dave

[tsunam]

hmm thanks for the link gore, I'll have to remember that. Let us know if it works.

[gorebrush]

well

one of the first ideas was to try LBA mode in BIOS.
This was not successful.

there are other possibilities. and i'm not about to give up easily.

Dave

[gorebrush]

the nightmare continues

in my haste, i deleted the partition table. i now have a nice clean formatted disk, i've lost some important data, but nothing i'll lose sleep over.

With the clean drive, i put fedora on, THEN windows, with the hope of using bootmagic from the powerquest suite.

here we go..

[saikee]

I am just a newbie trying my hand on Linux last week for the first time.

I bypassed the dual boot hassle by using spearate hard disks. Some time ago I decided as a policy to use only mobile racks so that my hard disks can be pull in and out just like floppies.

With that arrangement I managed to load several versions of Linux without bothering the XP at all. My own data is stored in yet another hard disk normally goes with the main PC in the home network. This allows me to use two different operating systems on the same data (not simultaneously of course).

Mobile racks are dirt cheap nowaday for ATA up to 133Mb/s (about £9 to £10) and price for SATA mobile racks are droping too.

I also find some external casings, using USB 2 connection, can accept mobile racks so that the hard disks can be prepared, formatted and filled with the necessary data externally without going anywhere near a PC.