Green newbie in need of HELP!!

[sabbathpriest 0]

Respectful Greetings Linux community:

Sick of Microsoft I've decided to give Fedora Core 4 a try. I've purchased a "Red Hat Fedora and Enterprise Linux 4 Bible" by Chris Negus with the bootable DVD and CDs, I've installed a second Hard Drive on my computer and I've tried to install Fedora on it, but so far no success, because of something I'm doing wrong Fedora cannot see my second hard drive and it just prompts me to either partition my main drive (where Windows XP professional is installed) or erase all partitions (which if I'm not wrong will erase all the data on my hard drive...)

My system Info:

 

AMD Sempron 3000+

2 Ghz

512 MB of RAM

Abit KV7-V Motherboard

Maxtor 120 GB 6B1209 Hard Drive (Windows XP is there, Master Drive)

Maxtor 120 GB 6Y1209 Hard Drive (This one is the Slave drive, nothing is there)If you are wondering YES I've changed the jumper to make it the slave drive.

 

I also have set the system to boot from DVD and I've run knoppix already...

 

Thank you for reading this, and very many thanks in advance if you can help me!!

 

 

[danleff 0]

Quote:

Maxtor 120 GB 6Y1209 Hard Drive (This one is the Slave drive, nothing is there)If you are wondering YES I've changed the jumper to make it the slave drive.

Is this drive seen in Windows?

Did you set up the drive with either partitioning software like PartitionMagic, or the Maxblast installation software?

You need to have some sort of fat32 or Linux partition on the drive in order for FC4 to see the drive, just as in a Windows installation, a NTFS or Fat32 partition must on the drive for the Windows installer to see the drive.

[sabbathpriest 0]

Thank you! I'll try today, I have the MaxBlast CD.

[sabbathpriest 0]

I did set up the drive with MaxBlast and successfully installed FC4. During the installation I chose FC4 to be the default at startup. Now when I start the system it boots directly to Windows XP. I tried going to Boot Menu and selected my second hard drive (where FC4 is installed) as the first boot device, but still no luck. I'm thinking that I have Both Hard Drives set as secondary (Seconday Master and Secondary Slave) because the cable was too short to reach the IDE 1 motherboard connection... is this the problem?

Thank you for you patience with me, and very many thanks in advance if you can help me!!

[sabbathpriest 0]

Update: I've set the Hard Drives as Primary Master and Primary Slave now, and again set the BIOS to boot from the Slave Hard Drive first. That got me a "NTLDR IS MISSING" message. I tried to fix that by loading the safe mode in the BIOS, but that got me nowhere, after rebooting I would not get past the first screen and I could not get to BIOS. I cleared the BIOS and rebooted to windows XP, still no sign anywhere of my Fedora Core 4. I'm very confused now...

Recap:

1) Installed slave Hard Drive for FC4

2) Installed FC4 successfully on Slave Hard Drive

3) Set Hard Drives as "Primary Master" and "Primary Slave"

4) Cleared BIOS and loaded default settings

5) On reboot I do not get the option to boot from FC4 or WinXP, the system boots directly to WinXP

 

Thank you for you patience, and very many thanks in advance if you can help me!!

 

[danleff 0]

Originally posted by sabbathpriest:

Quote:

Update: I've set the Hard Drives as Primary Master and Primary Slave now, and again set the BIOS to boot from the Slave Hard Drive first. That got me a "NTLDR IS MISSING" message. I tried to fix that by loading the safe mode in the BIOS, but that got me nowhere, after rebooting I would not get past the first screen and I could not get to BIOS. I cleared the BIOS and rebooted to windows XP, still no sign anywhere of my Fedora Core 4. I'm very confused now...

 

OK, changing the hardware designation is not a good idea. The boot.ini file in Windows points to what drive Windows boots to. This is why you got the "NTLDR IS MISSING" error.

 

I need to ask, is this a Dell or Gateway system? These systems are the bane of my existence on these forums. If not...

 

Quote:

1) Installed slave Hard Drive for FC4

 

2) Installed FC4 successfully on Slave Hard Drive

 

Good, so the drive is now set up with at least one partition so that Linux can see it.

 

Quote:

3) Set Hard Drives as "Primary Master" and "Primary Slave"

4) Cleared BIOS and loaded default settings

5) On reboot I do not get the option to boot from FC4 or WinXP, the system boots directly to WinXP

 

OK, so now you are booting into Windows. Do you remember how you set up Grub (the Fedora bootloader) to boot? From the MBR (Master Boot Record) or to a boot partition?

 

If this is not a Dell or Gateway system, you should install Grub (during the installation) to the MBR of the primary master drive, which is now hda1.

 

How one fixes this depends on your experience with Linux. Now that you have XP on the master and it is booting, I would suggest that you do a re-install of Fedora. The problem is that if grub was set up with the drives as secondary master and slave, grub and Fedora is pointing to these designations. The /etc/fstab file (tells grub where the root system is) will also be pointing to the secondary slave drive as the root of the system, which you do not want.

 

Fixing this is possible, but takes some work, since you changed to primary master and slave. Is this correct?

 

 

[sabbathpriest 0]

Thank you danleff for your help!

In order:

1) Not a Gateway of Dell system, I built this one myself: Abit KV7-V Motherboard, AMD Sempron 3000+ CPU etc (see above)

2) I re-run'd the FC4 DVD and changed GRUB to boot from the primary drive. The first time I attempted this I did it as an update and at the very end of the installation I got a "No kernel was loaded, no changes were made to the boot settings", so then I completely reinstalled FC4 erasing all data from the drive in the process and making sure that GRUB was set to boot from the master drive (were WinXP resides).

3)After the full install was done I rebooted to this message: "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer" blah blah if this message repeats check for viruses and remove any hard drives you've installed blah blah error [sTOP 0X0000007B (0XF894E640-0XC0000034-0X0000000-0X0000000)]

4) After reboot WinXP starts normally... no signs of GRUB or FC4.

 

Danleff you tell me "The problem is that if grub was set up with the drives as secondary master and slave, grub and Fedora is pointing to these designations. The /etc/fstab file (tells grub where the root system is) will also be pointing to the secondary slave drive as the root of the system, which you do not want."

Did I solve that problem by clearing the BIOS after re arranging the Hard Drives to Primary Master and Primary Slave and reinstalling FC4?

 

Once again, very many thanks for yor bearing with me and for your help. It goes without saying that if I had a similar problem with WinXP I'd be lost in the desert of customer support with no hope of rescue.

[danleff 0]

Quote:

1) Not a Gateway of Dell system, I built this one myself: Abit KV7-V Motherboard, AMD Sempron 3000+ CPU etc (see above)

OK, good. I just wanted to make sure. Some folks actually post the motherboard model of their Dell systems.

On your point #2, the Windows boot.ini file, just like the grub file points to the Windows system files to start the system. Switching the drives confused the boot.ini file, which was still pointing to the secondary master (if that was the drive designation when you installed windows originally). I am actually surprised that clearing the bios solved the problem. This is why you got the stop errors. You switched the hard drive cables and the boot.ini was still looking for the Windows files where Windows was originally installed.

Your last post reminded me of a possible problem with the Maxblast software. You usually get two choices on how to format the new drive. The first choice is if you are adding an operationg system to the drive. This choice should only be picked if this is the only drive on the system, or you are replacing the master primary drive to prepare it for a windows installation.

You should pick the second choice, use it as a data drive. This prevents the drive from being set up as a boot/master drive, where the MBR is. I bet grub got set up on the slave drive, if you picked the first choice using the Maxblast software, which set the drive as active boot.

Quote:

Did I solve that problem by clearing the BIOS after re arranging the Hard Drives to Primary Master and Primary Slave and reinstalling FC4?

Yes, for this most current installation. The drive and it's partition should have been detected at their current locations.

Let me think on this one a little more. But, make sure that the drives are also jumpered properly. There is no jumper on the slave drive, correct? Look in the bios to make sure that the drives are detected, as you expect.

I would correct the problem with the slave drive, if you picked the option in the Maxblast software to format the drive to use with installing an OS.

Make sure that Windows continues to boot correctly after this with no adjustments to the bios.

Finally, currently, the boot order in the bios is pointing to master hard drive or to the secondary? Of course, the proper thing to do, would be to set the ide cables just the way you had them from the start, making sure the jumpers is correct for master and no jumper for slave. Especially if Windoes boot is still causing a problem. Then we can go from there.

[sabbathpriest 0]

HI Danleff! here's the latest update:

I sent Maxtor the followig letter, I'm awaiting reply:

"I have installed a Maxtor 6Y1209 as a secondary drive. My primary is a Maxtor 6B1209. When I installed the 6Y1209 I did run MaxBlast, but I believe that I set the drive to boot/master drive by error (I intend to install Linux Fedora Core 4 as second OS on the 6Y1209, I have WinXP pro on the 6B1209) and now my system does no recognize the Unified Boot Loader because apparently it got installed on the Secondary Master Drive (6Y1209).

I would run MaxBlast again to see if there is a way to revert the settings, but when I insert the disk the only option I get is to uninstall MaxBlast from my system.

My questions are:

1. Can I safely uninstall MaxBlast and reinstall it later?

2. Can I set my Primary Master Drive (6B1209) as the Boot / Master drive from MaxBlast?

If my Secondary Master (6Y1209) is set as Boot / Master, can I safely change this settings to my Primary Master (6B1209)?"

 

[danleff 0]

Floyd;

 

Before you get an answer from Maxtor, did you check the bios settings to make sure the drives are primary master and slave?

 

Without confusing things any more, realize that you still have an MBR on the Windows drive (primary master) and there is no need to reset this. If this is part of the confusion, realize that when you changed the cables, the boot.ini may be looking for the Windows files on the wrong drive designation. This was the source of the NTLR not found error.

 

This can be fixed.

 

Is the bios set up to boot from the primary drive or secondary drive? And you are booting fine into Windows now?

 

Are you using the Maxblast diskettes or CDROM version?

 

You can use Maxbast to "zero write" the slave drive to wipe it and start over, if necessary, using the Maxblast maintenance option. But what I want to prevent is making a mistake and overwriting or wiping your MBR on the Primary drive. Especially if you do not have a full version of XP to repair the MBR. Do you have a full version of the Windows XP installation CDROM?

 

Here is a link to the Maxblast tutorial for reference;

 

Maxblast tutorial.

 

We can also probably fix the Fedora Grub installation with a little work.

[sabbathpriest 0]

Hi Danleff!

In answer to your questions:

1) The BIOS now shows the two Hard Drives as Primary Master and Primary Slave, and it's booting from Primary Master.

2) I'm booting fine into XP

3) I have the CD version of MaxBlast

4) I have the full version of XP pro

5) When I get home tonight (7:00 PM EST/GMT -5) I'll try the "Zero Write" on the Primary Slave Hard Drive.

 

Thanks thanks thanks!!!

[Edited by sabbathpriest on 2005-09-07 11:25:09]

 

[danleff 0]

Once you zero write the drive, set it up again with the Maxblast utility as a data drive only.

 

Then install Fedora and write grub to the MBR, which should be hda, your primary master drive.

[sabbathpriest 0]

Hi Danleff!

From the depths of despair I report that:

1) I zero wrote the Slave Drive

2) I reinstalled FC4, configured to install GRUB to /dev/hda

3) Got an "error informing the kernnel about modifications to partition /dev/hdb2 - device or resource busy. This means Linux won't know about any changes you made to /dev/hdb2 until you reboot - so you shouldn't mount or use it in any way before rebooting"

4) Chose "cancel", then rebooted

5) Booted to XP first, then shut down the computer and then started it again and booted from the FC4 DVD

6) Installed FC4 completely (not the upgrade choice) again, same configuration (GRUB installed on /dev/hda)

7) No error messages this time.. but rebooted nicely... to XP! No signs of GRUB.

8) If I try to boot for the Primary Slave drive I get a "Disk read error occurred, press ctr-alt-del to restart"

 

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrghhhhhhh!!!!!!! (sorry, I needed to let it out!)