danleff

I would not do this, at least not just yet. What seems to have happened, is that Shesha somehow changed the partition table in an unusual fashion. Using bootcfg may find and append the correct location of the Windows installation. Then he should try to boot with Grub and see if Windows boots properly. Look at his partition table. His Windows installation, from his description, is now on hda5, rather than hda1. It was on hda1. He appears to have an extended partition before the Windows partition. If he deletes the linux partitions, which are in the middle of the partition table (rather than the end), his logical order of partitions will change. This means that the boot ini file will point to the incorrect partition again. Depending on how he reinstalls Fedora, he will likely run into the same problem, because Fedora will install on the empty space, which is not at the end of the drive's partiton table. This is what got him into the problem to start. I would like to see his response first, before he moves on to once again alter his partiton table.

I have never used Windows 2000, so my knowledge is limited on this. But, I found the following. Windows 2000 should be installed first, then XP. See the Microsoft article located here. This question is also complcated by changing motherboards from an Intel to and AMD 64 and i assume that you are trying to keep the current operating systems intact, migrating the old IDE drives to the new system? This may present some interesting challenges for Fedora, since it was installed origionally on the Intel system with that hardware configuration used during the installation. Is this correct? Also, have you checked out how Windows 2000 will fare on this new motherboard? Remember, it was released long before this AMD motherboard class was designed. Before I get caught off guard again (as I did in a previous thread), what make and model motherbaord is the new board? Sometimes this can make a difference, as well, given the potential hardware changes. Are you using the same hardware (ie; video card etc...) I the new system? In any case, my question still stands. Rather than Fedora Core 5, I would do a fresh install of Core 6 and use grub as your bootloader. This would assure, hopefully, that Fedora likes your new hardware (motherboard). It may make thngs much easier. Core 4 does not do well in some cases with AMD 64 boards, especially if you add sata drives. If you keep Windows as your bootloader, you can elect not to have grub and add Fedora as a reference to the Windows boot.ini file. But this also takes some savy work in Fedora's rescue mode. This is why I recommend Grub as the bootloader. Why a fresh installation? Because I have not had a lot of luck with upgrades. Especially after migrating to a new motherboard of a different class and architecture. It may just be me, but save all your important files in Fedora and do a fresh installation of Fedora, once your Windows installations are straightened out and completed. But remember, aach OS that you install will want to ditch the current MBR (bootloader), so be cautious. If Fedora Core 4 is working fine now (sound and video work - you have only the older IDE drives in the system), upgrade to 6 and use Grub as the bootloader. I mention all these things, only because I have been through them. You obviously want to make the whole process as trouble free as possible. Again, unless you do some savy work, if you attempt to install Windows 2000 next to XP, you could run into some issues. Note the Microsoft article again that I referenced. This is why I asked for some of the true Windows gurus could respond to this issue. But my comments would be the ideal solution from my perspective, given the significant change in your system setup that you have now.

Nice detective work. I think that the title of your thread threw me off and had me looking on another direction. But the question that you posted on the first post should have clued me in. I bet that there is a bios setting messing up the works and the nodmaraid option ignored the bios setting. I now seem to remember this before in a previous thread. Your last post also gave important information, namely the motherboard you were using, which has had some quirks with Linux installations. But the result is the same, you were able to effectively troubleshoot the problem by working it through. For an interesting read on the subject (of course on older Fedora installations) see this thread from the Fedora Forum.

Your answer lies in the Powerquest website. Take a look at this article from the website.

If you need to use Windows, install it first, then Linux. Most flavors of Linux will set-up dual booting for you with little hassle. Call Microsoft and explain what happened and get them to walk you through the issue. This, of course, assumes that you have a valid copy of Windows. What I recommend you do for Linux is try a Live CD version of Linux. Most Linux distros (flavors) have a live CD version that allows you to "test drive" it before you install it on the hard drive. This way, you can see if the Linux flavor that you pick is user friendly for you and your roommate. Mepis or Mandriva would be good starters to do this. Of course, make sure that you have hardware that is compatible with any Linux flavor that you choose. Knowing what make and model system that you have would help folks guide you in this respect.

You posted this thread in the Linux games forum. Would you like me to move it to the Windows games forum?

What model presario do you have? You don't get rid of the Grub bootloader by deleting the Linux partition. The grub bootloader files are resident on the Master Boot Record of your hard drive and are not deleted by removing the Linux partition. In fact, by deleting the partition, you deleted the Grub reference files that allow Grub to boot properly. Since you are getting the no disk found error, I assume you do not have XP installed. The Windows disk needs a valid partition on the hard drive to identify a place to install to, whether it be a Fat32 or NTFS partition. I assume that you also have a full version of the windows XP installation disk? In any case, use the rescue CD to make a valid fat32 partition and you then can install XP. If you want to install a Linux flavor, then make sure that you have a valid Linux disk. Did you burn this Linux disk, or was it obtained elsewhere? Your laptop hardware may be at issue, as well. Many HP, Compaq and Gateway systems have proprietary hardware that are made to work with Windows. Getting Linux to install and run properly, can sometimes be a challenge, because of these hardware configurations in Laptops built to run in a Windows environment.

Take a look at this Microsoft Article. Look under the section "using basic disks" as the link would not allow me to point to that section directly. Windows Explorer does not show what physical drives your partitions are on, only the apparent logical order in which Windows sees them...C...D...E...and so on. Windows XP's Disk Management Utility will display the physical drives and their partitions, within Windows XP. PartitionMagic is a Windows utility. If you looked at your drives in PartitionMagic, then you would also see the USB hard drive as a distinct hard drive, as your IDE or SATA drives are. If you use the PartitionMagic Rescue floppy disks, it uses a DOS environment, as does Windows fdisk. Qtparted, a Linux utility, has the same limitations of four primary partitions per actual physical drive.

Looks to me as one of two things happened. Where was the free space on the drive before you started the Fedora installation? If it was not at the end of the drive, then this is the issue. Free space needs to be at the end of the drive when you install Fedora. If the logical order of the drives changed, say by installing Fedora to empty space not at the end of the drive, then this is the cause of the problem. When grub invokes the boot.ini for Windows, the boot.ini is looking for the Windows start-up files where they originally were, before the partition logical order changed. 1. What make and model laptop is this? 2. Did you use any partitoning software to set up the drive beforehand, say to set the data partition? Note how you set-up the drive partitions, with primary vs. extended partitions and logical volumes. This would be before you installed Fedora. 3. When you installed Fedora, what partitioning schema did you use to install Fedora within the installation partitioning section? The default method, or custom partitioning? 4. Do you know how to edit the Grub file, either from the Grub boot menu, or from within Fedora? Hopefully this will cover the possible issues that could have occured and how to proceed.

Let me elaborate further. Here are the primary partitions on my system. I have; A primary master drive with four primary partitions, the rest logical partitions on an extended. A Primary slave with two primary partitions and multiple logical partitions inside the extended. A sata drive with one primary partition and the rest on logical. Another sata drive with one primary and the rest logical inside the extended. I partitioned the USB drive with four primary partitions. When I tried to partition the fifth, the software greyed out the option of creating another primary partition on the USB drive. Ditto on the primary master drive. More than four partitions are not allowed on each physical drive seen by PartitionMagic or gparted (the latter application in Linux). All five drives are seen a separate physical drives in the partitioning software packages used.

If you create an extended partition, then you create logical partitions (as many as you need and space permits) within the extended partition. I don't know if Windows likes this, but with Lnux I have multiple logical partitions within an extended with various distros on each logical partition.

I just tried it. When you try to create more than four primary partitions in PartitionMagic, the ability to create any partitions is greyed-out. So it seems this applies to USB drives, as well, which are seen as any other physical drive. See this Microsoft article.

I have never tried this with a USB connected drive, but I will let you know. I just happen to have one to try it on from my ole laptop. Usually the partitioning software will complain about this and not allow the partitioning to continue. I just had this happen with gparted (Linux). I can try it on PartitionMagic 8 and let you all know.

Well, I don't usually wimp out on such questions, but in this case, I refer you to the following article on methods to install Fedora. You need to have a way to boot an install CD disk, floppy, or network installation, even if you "prep" the drive on another system. You could install Fedora on another system usng a laptop hard drive convertor, then place the drive back in the Dell Laptop, but that is another story. Probably the "host" machine will have video graphics much different than the old Intel video graphics on your laptop, so you would have to overcome that obsticle. Additionally, you would have to use the laptop hard drive as the primary master drive in the host system, to ensure that the Grub bootloader is set correctly. This way, the hard drive settings in grub will match the drive's designation when placed back in the laptop. There are workarounds, but not for someone new to Linux. These methods are not for the faint of heart.

I took a quick look around, and it looks like this printer will be an issue. Lexmark has not been forthcoming in sharing there code and no one seems to have tackled this printer driver build. You also need to note what exact make, model and revision of the wireless card, so we know what chipset it uses and what the support is probably like.

Your second post clarified a little what you are trying to do. In any case, you are going to lose a booloader no matter what you do in a triple boot situation. Perhaps the true Windows gurus can comment on this more fully. Keep in miond that each OS that you install assumes that it will be the only one on the system, so they proceed, by default, as such. I believe that when you install Windows 2000, it will overwrite the MBR, so I would look at the XP boot.ini file and either back this up, or write down the values. Ditto for when you install Windows 2000. Look at the boot.ini and write down the values. Since I am a Linux person, why not install Windows 2000 (taking the steps to note what the boot.ini files say as a precaution), then upgrade to Fedora Core 5 and use Grub to boot all your operating systems? If you insist on using the NT bootloader, you can then add the boot file (that would be placed in the root on the C drive) and add the reference to the Linuc boot file to the NT bootloader. Either way, you are only using the NT bootloader to reference the grub bootloader in Fedora. So, you do not want to remove Fedora, since the Fedora Grub reference files are on that boot or root partition, depending how you set Fedora up. The other quick thing that I noticed, is your use of the term "cable selected" for the Fedora drive. Is ths drive jumpered as either a primary slave, or secondary maseter or slave drive, not cable select on the hard drive's jumper? A small point, but I am just curious.

The primary partition limit of 4 is for each physical hard drive. So, if you have no more than four primary partitions on each physical hard drive, there should be no problem.

Sorry that I lost track of your thread. Glad that you got it going! Now that Fedora Core 6 got released today! I bet that on the previous attempts you did not get a valid chroot to the actual Fedora installation during the rescue process. I've seen this happen as well.

OK, well this was a direct link from the DP965LT web page located here. So the intent was to offer some common audio problems and solutions. Assuming that you don't have the 64 bit version of Windows, did you install the Audio: Sigmatel 9220/9221/9223 [5.10.5143_XP32_XP64_MCE_V1.EXE] audio driver? Reference The technical specifications say you have a 9227 audio chipset and the regular Sonic support on the Intel site does not mention your motherboard, but all references point there....Hmm..

I assume that you saw this article on troubleshooting audio issues? What version of Windows are you using?

First of all, let me ask, is this SuSE install verion 10 or 10.1? Yes, this can make a difference. With Linux the devil is in the details. Laptops can give one headaches, due to how power management is handled and general hardware issues. Let's look at the grub issues first. It appears that you probably did not erase your partitions on the hard drive completely. Why? We will see. Your detailed post deserves a good answer. Quote: root (hd0,6) : Error 21 "Selected disk does not exist". I've tried both hd1 and hd0 as well as hda1. I've also tried replacing the 6 for any number between 0 and 7. root (hda1,6) : Error 23 "Error while parsing number" You were mixing up the general designation of hard drive partitions in Linux and how grub sees things. 1. hd0,6 is the 7th partition on the hard drive, Grub starts with zero, so, 6 is really the 7th partition. I would assume that you had an extended partition still active and with your multiple installation attempts, you had multiple logical partitions on an extended partition. Grub was looking for the 7th partition, which may have been wrong anyway. In short, it was confused given the complexity of the hard drive partitons and probable mess from all the installation attempts. If you had really wiped the entire hard drive, then SuSE should have been on (hd0,0), or the first partition on a primary master hard drive, where hd0 is the primary master and the second 0 would be the first partition on the hard drive. hda is the general Linux designation for the primary master hard drive, not the first partition, which is hda1. The general designation starts with 1 for the first partition. Quote: mkdir kubuntu (was trying this in Kubuntu) then mount /dev/hda kubuntu and chroot ubuntu - now here's where it stopped working, because it would not use grub-install /dev/hda. It just gave me general help options when typing anything after grub-install. These directions that you followed did not explain the process fully. This is the problem when giving directions. Not explaining enough leads to errors, assuming folks know what you are talking about. Unfortunately, Linux gurus assume this a lot. I do it myself at times. In order to chroot into an installation, you designate the actual partition, not the entire hard drive. hda is the entire hard drive, where hda1 would designate a partition. So, mount /dev/hda kubuntu should have been mount /dev/hda1 kubuntu, where the number designates the actual partition. You tried to chroot into the entire hard drive, rather than the partition. Your actual Ubuntu installation was not mounted, so all the rescue tools were not available to you. Once you chroot, you need to navigate to the place where you mounted the installation, whch would be cd ubuntu. MP3 files have copyright issues, so MP3 player codecs are not available in a default installation of SuSE. See this article and this one to give you some hints and ideas what you need to do. This is assuming SuSE 10, not 10.1. Once you digest all this, then we can move on to the wireless. Assuming that the wireless that you have is the default card on the machine, then you probably have the Atheros chipset on the wireless card. You can get this to work in SuSE, by installing a driver package, such as MadWifi. More on this later.

I was looking for some specific instructions for Kubuntu, since that is what you are using. No real good article yet specific for Kubuntu. It looks like you got as far as configuring the driver for ndiswrapper. Now you have to actually load the driver; sudo depmod -a This adds the ndiswrapper module to the kernel depmod. Then do; sudo modprobe ndiswrapper This loads the actual ndiswrapper module configured with the Windows driver. See section 2.5.2.3 in the Ubuntu wiki article here. Now that the module is loaded, do; sudo iwconfig You should see an entry for wlan0 with some output. Your not done yet. Let me ask; 1. Do you have KWiFimanager installed? 2. Do you know the essid name and passphrase for the modem or router that you are using? You will need these to proceed either through the console or KWiFiManager. 3. Are you using WEP or WPA encription through the router or modem?

I looked around. It looks like support for the jmicron chipset is lacking in fedora Core 5. But, one user suggested trying this at the command line at the Fedora splash screen; linux all-generic-ide irqpoll See if you have any luck with that command. Note that it adds irqpoll to the command sequence. the reference for this is here. You are likely to have a problem with the Realtek LAN, but see how it goes.

I thought that i remembered something about this and your specs. jogged my memory. When you boot to the splash screen off the DVD disk, type in the console; linux all-generic-ide then hit the enter key and see if the DVD drive is detected. See this Fedora forum article on the subject. There are a couple more hints on the thread as well.

When you boot the new kernel, did you look at the Network Configuration and see what it says about the interface? Does it list it as inactive? Also look and see if it looks like it is configured for the correct eth0 connection for the hardware. I believe this is a realtek lan interface?