danleff

Your bootloader is not installed correctly. It is pointing to the right drives, but is installed on the second drive, not the boot drive? The commented out lines would have told us that. Look at figure 7.2 of my guide here. Does the statement on the top of the bootloader configuration screen say Install bootloader record on /dev/hda Master boot record? Or did it say /dev/sda, which is the sata boot drive? If hda, then it is installed to the IDE drive or the secondary drive on the system. This is why Fedora does not boot and XP comes up. Try getting into rescue mode (root user) and chroot to the installation. Then follow the directions here, but make sure that you point to the sata drive as such; grub-install /dev/sda

Quote: When I say that Vista installs quickly, I mean that it finishes copying the files to the partition in 4 or 5 minutes and then does it's first reboot straight into safe mode. Vista is not installing properly. Did you to download the sata/raid drivers on floppy from the Gigabyte website download page for your motherboard before installing Vista? Make the disk and then press F6 during Windows setup to read from floppy. Then your raid/sata drive will be recognized correctly.

IF the external hard drive is formatted fat 32, there should be no problem with XP finding and reading it. What type external enclosure is it? What's interesting is that both your old internal and external hard drive seem to be having reading problems. Any chance that a virus affected both?

This thread is over two years old, so I doubt that Frank is still around. He only posted once in 2005. Do you have the manual to this system? Is this an AGP or PCI video card?

The first thing that you need to do is stop trying to install and reinstall your operating systems. We need to exactly what you have doone so far. At first you said; Quote: now i am not getting the option to opt either linux or xp. it just boots xp by default. This led me to believe that you installed Fedora totally to the second hard drive, along with the /boot partition created during the process. However, then you apparently tryed a repair install of XP, which failed. Now you are getting... Quote: well i tried to repair my xp. and when the setup restarted first time after copying setup files even then it loaded fc6 by default and there was no menu to select from, the OS not for even single second... How did you "remove" Fedora, by just reformating the second hard drive? If so, this will not work IF you actually changed your bootloader to reside on the primary boot drive. in this case, the Grub bootloader is still resident on the MBR of the sata drive and needs Fedora to boot. Let's look at what happens. When you get to the installation screen that allows you to set up your drive(s) you must use caution. If you read my article, then you know that you must pass special directions when installing to a second hard drive. If you did not uncheck your sata drive when partitoning your hard drive and allowed Fedora to alter the sata drive, then a /boot partition may have been created on your sata drive. In this case, then your master boot record could have been altered by the creation of this /boot partition. When you installed Fedora, did you uncheck the sata drive, so that any changes did not affect that drive, but only the second hard drive, that you wanted to install Fedora to? Let us know where you are exactly at this point. Also, you should be able to recover XP's bootloader using the Windows Recovery Mode, if need be. This assumes that you know your admin. password for Windows. But remember, you have tried installing multiple operating systems now on the system, so it is hard to determine what you did during all these install attempts.

Sounds like you are going in circles with this one. Let's go step by step. When you say that FC6 removed your boot option to boot into Windows, is it really gone, or did the system just boot to fast into FC6? The default is about 5 seconds. Yes, you can change this. Also, if you unchecked the option to boot into XP during the installation phase where you are asked what default boot to use, this could be a problem. Is there an entry in the /boot/grub/menu.lst for XP? Take a look at my guide on FC5, located here. This should get you started. Pay special attention to the section on sata drives, as you gollow through the pages. When you say that you updated Windows, what do you mean by this? Do you mean that you replaced the bootloader, or reinstalled XP?

I think that rockytruelyrox has moved on. This thread is over 4 1/2 months old.

An article that probably explains what happened is located here. Did you answer the question to have the partiton converted to NTFS after the system reboots? BTW, I will remove your other post, as it is a duplicate and you can follow posted answers in one place here.

The first thing to consider is if your hardware is supported in RedHat 9. It is no longer supported ny RedHat, because of the distro's age. If you have fairly new hardware (say made in the last 2-3 years) then this is not a good choice for you. Secondly, when installing to a second hard drive on the system, you must tell Grub (or whatever bootloader being installed) to place the bootloader on the primary disk, which always boots your system. In your case, this is the XP disk. If you know how to do a rescue boot using the first installation CD, then you can probably reconfigure the bootloader. But first, is this what you want to do, considering your system and it's hardware? So, the questions are; 1. What hardware are you using? If older and supported by RedHat 9, then; 2. What bootloader are you using, Grub?

It's not the hiberfil.sys file, is it?

Or..... Intel products - Clearing BIOS Passwords.

Could you give some more information? What operating system are you running? What make and model video card is the new one? PCI card or AGP? Does your motherboard/system support the new card that you bought? Some newer motherboards only support specific makes and models of AGP video cards (for example, AGI types). Did you uninstall the drivers for the old video card before installing the new card? Significant changes in the type of video card that you switch out, including different makes can cause this, especially if you don't rid the system of the old drivers.

Quote: I tried to install Red Hat Enterprise LINUX, LINUX 8 and LINUX 9. I got the following errors: By Lnux 8 and 9, do you mean RedHat Linux 8 or 9? Which version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux? In any case, it sounds like you are trying to install versions which are very old and do not support your hardware. What is the make and model of your motherboard or system?

Take a look at this post and see if it helps.

Ok, let's look at this step by step. At first you said; Quote: I tried to install Vista to a new partition along side of XP and Mandriva. Which led me to believe that you had tried to install Vista after XP and Mandriva. But that is not the case? You said that Vista seemed to install quickly? How quickly? Then you noted; Quote: I'm using grub, for the first time, usually Mandriva has used lilo. But this is the first time the 64bit version installed ok. But that's besides the point. The point is that vista won't boot after it installs(this is before linux is even installed). So, currently is Grub installed and you are booting using Grub, which gives you the XP boot.ini with XP and Vista as options, or straight to the Windows bootloader...no grub bootloader interaction at all? If the Windows bootloader only, did you use the Vista hardware compatability tool to make sure that your hardware was compatable with Vista before you attempted the installation? Vista and XP use two different booloader methods. When I did this with my system, the Vista bootloader took over, but pointed to Vista (believe it or not) at the incorrect location. This is why peterh suggested the bootloader fix. Windows will do the repeated booting thing when either there is a hardware problem, or the bootloader is corrupted. Finally, you said; Quote: I really don't think that the problem has anything to do with the bootloader. I've tried to install Vista on 4 different partitions, on 4 different hard drives. Was the primary (boot) drive in the system always the same (you addded secondary drive(s) to try re-installations) or did you swap out drives at random? What I am getting at, is this a Vista hardware issue, or actually a bootloader problem? You might want to state what your hardware is, so folks can troubleshoot which may be the issue.

Perhaps try the Checking Your Notebook PC Using the HP System Health Scan in Windows XP first? If the scan leads you there, then Locating HP Software, Driver and BIOS Updates in Windows XP. In terms of the device manager, what does it tell you about the DVD drive? If there is a ? for the device, then try method 2, but only for the DVD drive, not any other IDE devices.

What model laptop is this? What was the registry fix that you applied? Was it an HP recommended fix, say from the website?

Did you try to set the RECALL setting, so the monitor goes back to the factory defaults?

Fedora Core 4 is too old to recognize most current hardware, espcially motherboard chips with SATA. You need to download Fedora Core 6. FC 4 is not supported properly any longer and you will find FC 6 much easier to use. In fact, I am testing FC7 test now and really love it! But, I would not recommend this version, as it is still in testing. In terms of the Grub problem, you need to have grub on the drive that is set to boot in the bios, namely the IDE drive. If you want a technical guide to installing Fedora, see my article about installing FC 5, located here. There are also great guides elsewhere on the Internet, including the Fedora web page.

What bootloader are you using? I assume Grub? If so, is Grub pointing to the XP partition, or Vista's?

What Tojan was removed from the system and using what removal tool?

Are you trying to use CD-RW disks or CD-R disks for the recovery disks? I have read that CD-RW disks are not supported using this recovery tool - you must use CD-R disks. See here

Does the retail box state that it is compatible with Windows Vista? If not, you need to contact Symantec and ask for an upgrade of the product.

Did you try this troubleshooting tree from the HP support page?

What model number router are you using? What ISP are you using and what type connection, DSL, Broadband or Fios? Do you have access to another computer with an Internet connection in order to access Belkin's support page, which is very good?