Dual boot Win xp and Fedora core

[hariprasaad 0]

Hi,

guys please take time and read this. I hope you can help me out.

I am really really new to linux. But I have friends who are linux fanatics. So as per their advice I wanted to try and familiarise myself with linux. So on my p4 , 3GB RAM and 150*(2) GB harddisks system I decided to load linux on my second Hard disk. I made a copy of FC4 on a DVD from a mirror which worked all fine. I checke sha1 and it matched. So I was all happy till this point. Now I installed FC4 on my second HD, the wizard did all the work and it was time for me to reboot from which point everything went downhill. When I rebooted, linux was not recognised and it booted straight into XP. So I decided to take the help of the online experts and in the process did a few things to load grub on my first (hd0,0). Now when I rebooted the grub screen appears but now I cant choose neither of my OS's. Grub keeps re appearing even after chossing the OS. So I decided to recover my winxp using the installation cdrom and rewrote my MBR only to find that it also changed my partition table and so I have lost everything now.

 

I am starting all over again. Now my question to you guys is the following: What are the things I need to take care of while making a dual boot with Win xp and FC4 ?

 

Any help in this direction will be really appreciated

[Wilhelmus 1]

My current configuration:

/dev/hda1,(hd0,0),(40GB): Windows XP.

/dev/hdb1,(hd1,0),(120GB): Fedora Core 4.

 

I just used the default configuration which it offered to me.

Renamed "other" to "Windows XP" and set it to default.

Accepted. Now I get grub boot menu where are "Windows XP" and "Fedora Core 4 %kernelversion%".

 

[danleff 0]

Quote:

So I decided to take the help of the online experts and in the process did a few things to load grub on my first (hd0,0). Now when I rebooted the grub screen appears but now I cant choose neither of my OS's. Grub keeps re appearing even after chossing the OS.

It depends on what you did to install grub to what you thought was the MBR. My guess is that you did grub-install /dev/hda1. It should have been grub-install /dev/hda.

When installing Fedora, just allow grub to be written to the MBR. This should set things up to boot either OS, unless you have a weird partitioning scheme on the first hard drive.

What system are you using? Is it a Dell or Gateway computer by any chance?

[mckennma 0]

I was able to dual boot Redhat 9 and Windows 2003 Server on my test network.

 

I created a 100 MB C: FAT32 partition for common boot files. Installed Windows 2003 Server onto D: on a separate hard drive in FAT32. When I installed Redhat 9, I put the /boot 100 MB partition on the same drive as C:. The / parition below it. The /swap partition went on the other drive with Win2003. I used Grub. You need FAT parition for Linux and Windows to both understand. Windows should load its boot files on C:. Grub will understand it.

[tom_lc 0]

Originally posted by Wilhelmus:

Quote:

My current configuration:

/dev/hda1,(hd0,0),(40GB): Windows XP.

/dev/hdb1,(hd1,0),(120GB): Fedora Core 4.

 

I just used the default configuration which it offered to me.

Renamed "other" to "Windows XP" and set it to default.

Accepted. Now I get grub boot menu where are "Windows XP" and "Fedora Core 4 %kernelversion%".

 

 

Well, my configuration is similar to yours (except for my hdb is only 40GB as well as hda) but my problem is similar to that of hariprasaad. I have tried to install FC4 on hdb while having WinXP on hda. First I tried to put GRUB to hdb1 but nothing changed and WinXP booted after restert without any GRUB selection screen. Therefore, I did deleted all partitions on hdb and performed a new install of FC4 on this disk. This time, I chose to install GRUB to mbr on hda. I also changed "other" to "WinXP" as you and set it to default. But afterwards, when FC4 was installed, I restarted the computer but no GRUB appeared again.

 

...and I have no idea, what the problem is.

 

Tom

 

PS: I am really new to Linux.

[davidcw 0]

Hello,

 

I'm a newbie to Linux, but have been hacking at computers for a while. This is what I did to get my Fedora Core 4 to play nice with Windows XP. It's not a pretty solution, but I'm tired of playing with it. Let me know if someone finds a nicer way.

 

NOTE: You will probably want to read this through first, and print it out along with the link provided half way through.

 

My system: 2 Harddrives, Windows XP installed first.

Physical Master Drive, Partition 1: Windows XP

Physical Slave Drive: Fedora Core 4 (FC4)

 

Step 0: Start installing Fedora Core 4.

 

Step 1: GRUB Installation Options

At the top of one of the installation screens, the installer says that GRUB will be put at "/dev/hd*". Check the box that allows you to configure the bootloader options. Hopefully GRUB will also acknowledge on this screen that you have some "other" (Windows) operating system it can boot to. Click NEXT

 

Step 2: A screen will show up that will allow you to check whether you want GRUB installed as the MBR or something else. Below those options you can select which drive GRUB will recognize as the MBR. Move the drive on which you are installing linux to the top of the list. Hit OK.

 

NOTE: The idea is to have an MBR on the drive on which you are installing Fedora Core.

 

Step 3: Go through with the rest of the install. Hit REBOOT when prompted.

 

Step 4: At the POST hit "delete" or "F2" or whatever you need to do to get into your BIOS. You are going to want to change the boot order so the drive on which you just installed FC4, GRUB and MBR first. Exit and Save your BIOS. Your computer should reboot.

 

Step 5: GRUB should* popup now, since everything you've just done makes your computer only see the drive with FC4.

 

Step 6: GRUB will now attempt to boot into whatever you selected as the default OS in the FC4 installation process. You will want to hit anykey to exit this process and get to the GRUB menu.

 

Step 7: The commands for booting into the Windows OS sometimes don't work. Using the arrow keys, select the menu item that represents the Windows OS (This should be the menu item without "FC4" or "Fedora" in its name). Press the letter "e".

 

Step 8: If you ONLY see this:

 

rootnoverify(hd0,0)

chainloader +1

 

You probably have a problem. Hit the letter "b."

 

Step 9: Wait for a couple of minutes. If Windows doesn't start booting, restart your computer. If Windows does boot. . .you're DONE.

 

Step 10: This time, when you get to the GRUB Menu, boot into FC4. You might have 2 "FC4" options to choose from. I find that "Fedora Core-up" is good enough.

 

Step 11: Once you're at the FC4 login screen login as: "root". Note, you MUST login as "root" in order to have the Administrative rights you will need.

 

Step 12: Navigate the file system to get to: "/boot/grub/grub.conf". Click the file to open it. You are going to modify the commands it uses to boot Windows.

 

Step 13: You will see a couple of lines that start with "title:"

Find the "title:" line that corresponds to the commands to boot Windows.

 

Goto: http://vidalinux.net/wiki/index.php/Grub

 

For instructions on how to change the GRUB boot commands.

This is what I used:

 

title: Windows XP

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

makeactive

chainloader +1

 

Step 14: Save this .conf file.

 

Step 15: Logout of FC4 and restart your computer.

 

Step 16: At the GRUB menu, see if you can boot into Windows. If not, select the Windows option and hit "e". Following the instructions at the GRUB link above, you might have to play with adding/editing/deleting certain boot commands.

 

Step 17: If all of this fails, reboot your computer and get back into your BIOS. Select the drive Windows is installed on to be the first drive to boot. Save and Exit.

 

Step 18: Another way to go about getting a dual boot FC4 and Windows is to attempt to modify Window's boot.ini file to use the Grub bootloader. I found that this requires using the "mount" command which I do not believe supports NTFS. So, if your windows is installed on NTFS, this method might be doomed from the start.

 

Goto: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?threadid=339219

 

Member "Lambda_Core" has posted some instructions that I never got to work, but might give those with more energy a good base to work from. You will need to have the FC4 Rescue CD on hand to use his advice.

 

Just remember, I'm a newbie too. This is just what worked for me. It doesn't require changing Windows boot.ini, which reduces the risk of other newbies not being able to boot back into Windows.

 

SOME USEFUL WINDOWS BASED TOOLS*:

R-LINUX

LTOOLS

* I couldn't get these to work for me, but apparently they have worked for others.

 

Good Luck to All!

[DevinWolfe 0]

Hi everyone. Sorry if I'm not posting in the correct area but i looked for another forum that had something to do with my question and this is the closest i found. I'm completely new to Linux and I have done a hefty amount of reading and research lately. I have learned that a good starting distribution would be Suse, Fedora Core, or Gentoo. I have downloaded Gentoo and Suse as ISO files. I tried burning them to CDs as they were, i tried extracting the ISOs into regular folders and directories, and i tried some kind of ISO image burner and nothing seems to make them boot from my laptop CD ROM drive. I know it boots from the CD ROM because the Windows XP disk boots straight off the CD and i have no 3 1/2 inch floppy drive so a floppy boot disk is out of the question. Is there anything else i need to consider? or do?

 

I have an HP zv500 series laptop

3.06Ghz P4 HT

60Gb HDD

512 Mb DDR SDRAM

128 Mb video

and a bootable DVD+RW/CD-RW disk drive if that helps.

Sorry again if my post is not in the correct forum.

[danleff 0]

You don't extract the iso files or burn them as a data disk, you must burn them as an image disk.

 

See my how-to here.

 

Is this the mistake that you are making?

 

What burning software are you using?

 

The other issue is the burner's ability to read CDRW disks. A lot of laptops have issues with this. Try a cd-r disk and burn the inage at a slow speed, say 4X or 8X. These iso images need to be burned at s slow speed.

[DevinWolfe 0]

Wow that helped out a lot thanks, now i can actually get started with my linux "adventure."

[sachin 0]

Hi everybody. I am trying to install Fedora Core 4 on a P3 machine with a 20 GB harddisk. The machine already has WIN XP installed. XP is installed on the primary partition i.e. hd0. I installed Fedora on hd6. During installation, I selected not to install boot-loader on hd0 but on hd6. I also selected hd6 as the mount point /. Then i copied the first 256 bytes of hd6 using dd command in a file fedora.bin and copied this file into the windows partition .To redirect to GRUB from the NTLDR, i appended the following to boot.ini in WIN XP:

c:\fedora.bin="FEDORA"

Now when the system boots up, NTLDR shows me the "FEDORA" option but when i select it a blank screen appears and nothing happens.

I tried to discover what the problem is and ran the FEDORA in "rescue linux" mode. Then i tried to look whether the start1 and start2 images exist on hd6 or not. But to my dismay start1 doesn't exist on hd6. I ca't make out what went wrong during FEDORA installation. I don't want to modify my MBR and thats why i did all this redirection stuff. Please help me.

 

 

[danleff 0]

Take a look at this article which should help.

[kyrnel 0]

hello all! i've got a problem.

 

i have a fc3 installed last year 2005 in 40gb Secondary Slave. i've got the cd rom in Primary master. then this time i install a windows xp in a 40gb Secondary Master. My problem is that i don't know the command line to put in the windows xp dual boot menu - boot.ini file. the to OS is running if i used the bios boot sequence. any suggestion? please i need the solution. if you want email me here. sacicto at gmail.com replace the "at" thanks...

[sachin 0]

Hi Moderator,

 

Incidentally i followed the same link for carrying out the installation process. But still i am facing problem The problem is due to the wrong configuration of the GRUB as the stage1 image is missing for GRUB. Please help.

[danleff 0]

Quote:

Then i copied the first 256 bytes of hd6 using dd command in a file fedora.bin and copied this file into the windows partition .

sachin, the first 256 or 512 bytes?

dd if=/dev/hdb6 of=bootsect.lnx size=512 count=1.


kyrnel;

Quote:

have a fc3 installed last year 2005 in 40gb Secondary Slave. i've got the cd rom in Primary master. then this time i install a windows xp in a 40gb Secondary Master. My problem is that i don't know the command line to put in the windows xp dual boot menu - boot.ini file. the to OS is running if i used the bios boot sequence.

Please be a little more clear. You currently have grub or lilo as your bootloader and it is working for Fedora?

Where is it installed?

You noted that "this time" you installed XP on the secondary master. Did you have it installed elsewhere before? If so, did you upgrade the installation (just choose to reinstall to a specific drive), or start from scratch?

What is on the primary slave, if anything?

Generally, it is not advised to install Windows XP after linux. The reason?

The boot.ini file is specific to where you installed XP. So, when you use grub or lilo, you need to know where grub or lilo is installed.

If you are using grub, and can boot into Fedora, can you post the menu.lst file? Then we can go from there.

[kyrnel 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

Quote:

Then i copied the first 256 bytes of hd6 using dd command in a file fedora.bin and copied this file into the windows partition .

 

sachin, the first 256 or 512 bytes?

 

dd if=/dev/hdb6 of=bootsect.lnx size=512 count=1.

 

 

kyrnel;

 

Quote:

have a fc3 installed last year 2005 in 40gb Secondary Slave. i've got the cd rom in Primary master. then this time i install a windows xp in a 40gb Secondary Master. My problem is that i don't know the command line to put in the windows xp dual boot menu - boot.ini file. the to OS is running if i used the bios boot sequence.

 

Please be a little more clear. You currently have grub or lilo as your bootloader and it is working for Fedora?

 

Where is it installed?

 

You noted that "this time" you installed XP on the secondary master. Did you have it installed elsewhere before? If so, did you upgrade the installation (just choose to reinstall to a specific drive), or start from scratch?

 

What is on the primary slave, if anything?

 

Generally, it is not advised to install Windows XP after linux. The reason?

 

The boot.ini file is specific to where you installed XP. So, when you use grub or lilo, you need to know where grub or lilo is installed.

 

If you are using grub, and can boot into Fedora, can you post the menu.lst file? Then we can go from there.

 

 

 

danleff:: ok. both the 2 hdd with fc3 and windows xp are running. with out the other. i cant do that in bios boot sequence. if i want fc3 to be run i just change the bios sequence and it runs properly. the same with windows xp. im using grub in my fc3. only the windows xp was installed this month. b4 i have only 1 hdd for fc3. then this month additional hdd for my new installed windowsxp. so im askin a command line that can be added in boot.ini so that my fc3 will be easily boot. using the boot.ini of windows xp. my hdd configuration is this cdrom-primary master, windows xp-primary slave, fc3-secondary slave( i can't change this one to primary master or secondary master coz it cant be loaded when i change the boot sequence in the bios to point where my fc3 hdd is.) just tell me again if you have some clarification. thanks!

 

[danleff 0]

kyrnel;

 

Please post the content of your /boot/grub/device.map file.

 

The best way to do this is to add Windows to your grub file.

 

To accomplish this, we need to know what the drive designation layout is for grub, as it seems that you have your system setup in an unusual fashion.

[kyrnel 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

kyrnel;

 

Please post the content of your /boot/grub/device.map file.

 

The best way to do this is to add Windows to your grub file.

 

To accomplish this, we need to know what the drive designation layout is for grub, as it seems that you have your system setup in an unusual fashion.

 

 

Danleff: here is my device.map

 

# this device map was generated by anaconda

(fd0) /dev/fd0

(hd0) /dev/hdd

 

[danleff 0]

OK, try this. Add the following to your device.map file, using your favorite editor.

 

(hd1) /dev/hdc

 

This adds the Secondary master drive to grub.

 

Then to the menu.lst file;

 

title Windows XP

chainloader (hd1,0)+1

 

Make sure that there is an extra space after this entry. Save the file and see if you get a valid Windows boot on your next boot, by choosing the Windows XP entry at the grub boot prompt.

 

Realize, that grub does not know about the extra drive that you added, until you tell it so.

 

[kyrnel 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

OK, try this. Add the following to your device.map file, using your favorite editor.

 

(hd1) /dev/hdc

 

This adds the Secondary master drive to grub.

 

Then to the menu.lst file;

 

title Windows XP

chainloader (hd1,0)+1

 

Make sure that there is an extra space after this entry. Save the file and see if you get a valid Windows boot on your next boot, by choosing the Windows XP entry at the grub boot prompt.

 

Realize, that grub does not know about the extra drive that you added, until you tell it so.

 

 

danleff: hello! i did what you said but nothing happens. it created a menu of 2 operating system but only the FC3 is booting, so here is my harddisk when i booted to FC3:

 

In FC3 BIOS config BIOS Boot Sequence

DVD-Writer hda - Primary master CDROM

windows XP - hdb - Primary slave HDD0

data hdd - hdc - secondary master HDD1

FC3 - hdd - secondary slave HDD2

 

note: i change /dev/hdc to /dev/hdb coz i know that you point it to my secondary master which is a data hdd. both XP and FC3 are bootable and independent to each other when i used the BIOS boot sequence. hope you can tell me what to do next.

 

 

[kyrnel 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

OK, try this. Add the following to your device.map file, using your favorite editor.

 

(hd1) /dev/hdc

 

This adds the Secondary master drive to grub.

 

Then to the menu.lst file;

 

title Windows XP

chainloader (hd1,0)+1

 

Make sure that there is an extra space after this entry. Save the file and see if you get a valid Windows boot on your next boot, by choosing the Windows XP entry at the grub boot prompt.

 

Realize, that grub does not know about the extra drive that you added, until you tell it so.

 

 

danleff: hello! i did what you said but nothing happens. it created a menu of 2 operating system but only the FC3 is booting, so here is my harddisk when i booted to FC3:

 

CONTENT - In FC3 - BIOS config - BIOS Boot Sequence

DVD Writer - hda - Primary master - CDROM

windows XP - hdb - Primary slave - HDD0

data hdd - hdc - secondary master - HDD1

FC3 - hdd - secondary slave - HDD2

 

just look at the - separator so that you can understand my column and row.

 

note: i change /dev/hdc to /dev/hdb coz i know that you point it to my secondary master which is a data hdd. both XP and FC3 are bootable and independent to each other when i used the BIOS boot sequence. hope you can tell me what to do next.

 

 

[kyrnel 0]

danleff please help!

[danleff 0]

OK, originally you noted that you installed Windows on the Secondary Master;

 

Quote:

then this time i install a windows xp in a 40gb Secondary Master.

 

So, if Windows is on the primary slave, things are a bit different. Sounds like you mapped correctly.

 

 

Now, try the following;

 

In a console window, as root user, type;

 

grub-install --recheck /dev/hdd

 

After that you will want to change your /boot/grub/grub.conf to this:

 

title Win2k

map (hd0) (hd1)

map (hd1) (hd0)

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

chainloader +1

 

Make sure your bios boot order is where it was originally before you do this, assuming that grub is installed to the Master Boot Record of the Fedora drive.

 

[kyrnel 0]

danleff just refer to my last info thats the final setting of my drives. take note that both winxp and fc3 can boot independently from each other when i change the bios sequence of my bootable drives. for now i will do what you said. thanks!

[danleff 0]

Yes, I was referring to the boot order in the bios that you had when you first installed and used Fedora.

 

The two OS' run independently from each other, because you most likely have Grub on the MBR of the Fedora drive, so it boots when you have this drive set first in the bios.

 

Windows boots when you change the boot order to boot first from the drive that has Windows on it, as the MBR of that drive has the Windows boot sequence.

 

Since you installed Windows after Fedora, you need to make some modifications. This is why it is recommended that you not install Windows after a Linux distro.

 

Grub has no way of knowing about Windows (since you installed it last) unless you tell it about Windows. If you installed Fedora after Windows, the installation process would have picked up Windows as a valid boot option.

 

Of course, your hard drive sequence (how they are set up as primary master, slave, secondary master....is different from the usual setup.

 

Windows always wants to be first, so it installs it's boot files on the first hard drive in the system, unless you tell it otherwise. In your case, your primary slave drive.

[skk 0]

Hello everyone

 

I have found others posts for dual booting so i am posting mine as well.

 

I recently changed my seagate (40Gb) hard disk from a Compaq Presario 5410US machine to a Dell Optiplex Gx1 machine as the former's motherboard is malfunctioning. The hard disk contains windows Xp and Redhat9 installed on it. I was not having any problems with the dual boot on Compaq box. But after migration, I am not able to boot into Windows XP.

 

It displays the familiar message and starts blinking after that.

 

rootnoverify

chainloader +1

 

I observe that my GRUB is not able to find the Windows boot.ini file. After seeing some forums, i tried some options but none worked.

 

1. Used the windows Xp boot disks to copy the ntldr and ntdetect.com. Fixboot did not activate the boot on windows.

2. Recreated the partition table from linux rescue but to no gain.

3. Tried to change the boot.ini from linux mount, but it did not allow me to write into the file.

4. Got a succesful acknowledgement when i gave grub-install --recheck /dev/hda.

 

 

The following are my system configuration:

Dell Optiplex GX1 Pentium III,

Ram -256MB SDRam, Hard disk 40Gb.

 

Can you help me in accessing my windows Xp again?

 

Thanks