How to install Fedora Core 4 and WinXP on single hard disk?

[ezeuba 0]

Good day all of you.

I am new to this forum and I am doing some research with different versions of linux working with win xp pro. i have used ubuntu hoary hedgehog, and moved to breezy badger. Ubuntu installs cleanly with win xp on the hard disk already: ubuntu uses the free space on the drive and creates its own partitions. I have downloaded fedora core 4 and burned the 4 cd's. I tried to install to my system with win xp already running but it says cannot find partition or smthing like that. Now I know I should re-format and create about three partitions (my hdd is 60gb), but I want to know if I should leave the first partition and install xp to the second so fedora can install its boot sector on the first partition? Will this work? I can't use a second hard drive since I am using a notebook (ibm thinkpad t41, 1.7Ghz CPU, 1gb mem, 60gb hdd, dvd/cd-rw). Any help toward resolving this is appreciated as I intend formatting by tomorrow to accomodate win xp and fedora core 4. THANKS.

[danleff 0]

Quote:

I tried to install to my system with win xp already running but it says cannot find partition or smthing like that.

Well what did it exactly say? That it could not find a valid partition to install to?

If you plan on installing Fedora on a system that already has another distro on it, then you need to make a fresh partition for Fedora.

Quote:

but I want to know if I should leave the first partition and install xp to the second so fedora can install its boot sector on the first partition? Will this work?

Again, what is exactly on the system now?

If you plan just to have XP and Fedora on the system, just install XP. Then Fedora. You can either leave the rest of the hard disk space free, allow Fedora to use free space on the XP partition (where it would create it's own partitions on either free space or available space on the XP partition), or partition ahead of time with a utlity like PartitionMagic. If the latter option, you use "expert mode" partitioning and point Fedora to the pre-formatted partition.

Windows wants to be first. Doing otherwise may confuse things and result in grub not booting Windows properly.

Some advocate making a 100 mb boot partition on the drive first, a second for Windows, then a third for Linux. this can work as well, as long as you install XP first. The 100 mg boot partition acts as your boot partition. Just make sure that you install grub on that partition, if you choose this method.

Take care. If you have a Dell, Compaq or HP laptop and XP was pre-installed, these systems often have a hidden partition on the drive first, that holds recovery data.

Let us know exactly what you have, so we can advise you better.

[ezeuba 0]

Thanks for the reply i got. i really appreciate it. the issue now is that i have been running win xp on my system (ntfs) and i just downloaded this fedora core 4 because i have been getting interested in linux lately, so i want to try it out and see how it goes. basically i know linux is more stable than windows. i want to re-format my hard drive and reload win xp and fedora this time. i have tried with ubuntu and it was a breeze, but when i tried with fedora it said "cannot find valid mount points"(?) after some thinking i figured maybe it was because my file system on win xp i am using now is ntfs. does this matter? i can change it to fat32 if so when i re-format. please dont be offended by my asking seemingly foolish questions, but i have to get it right because in my area there is nobody who uses linux, so all my help and guidance is from guys like you, and i appreciate it much. any other helpful advice is very welcome. thanks.

[wizdom 0]

I'm getting the same "Cannot find partition" type error, also just getting "GRUB" and nothing else.

 

Here's what I did.

 

The machine at first only had windows on it. The machine was inkinded to me. I was going for a fedora 4 install without windows. So for the partitioning setup during install, i chose to remove all information on all drives, went with the 'use MBR option' and evrything installed correctly.

 

Note about system, Has 3 drives, one connected via IDE to hard drive (hda) and two other sata (sda1 and sda2) hard drives. After opening the computer up, I found that the ide hard drive was not mounted (not screwed into case at all) and was left to fly around while still connected to the ide cable. So then I figured that was probably the problem and totally disconnected the hd drive (removed the ide cable and power plug from the HD)

 

I reinstalled again and chose to remove all files from drives, and also only chose to install on one of the sda drives (leaving the other sda as "free space"(install goes in successfully with no errors) and now this time, after boot, i just get:

 

GRUB

 

and thats it... exactly like that. I tried pressing evrybutton even combos of buttons and nothing works... only thing I can do is hit the power button. Im able to boot from the rescue disk, or disc 1... and browse around but I can't get it to load linux on boot. I've been looking around this forum i did find one thing im going to try when i get home :

 

grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

 

will tryit by loading the 1st install cd in and doing rescue and mount. Any feedack is helpful

 

I already have another machine i just installed up and running with fedora 4 no problems (but also no sda's, just hda's)

 

 

[danleff 0]

Quote:

I'm getting the same "Cannot find partition" type error, also just getting "GRUB" and nothing else.

These are two different errors.

The first states that grub can't find the partition referenced.

The second is probably that the root /boot/grub files, or the grub /boot partition is no longer there. You did remove the ide drive, where Linux was originally installed, correct?

By removing the ide hard drive, you changed the designation of the drives from the original installation of Linux. Grub is confused, as the drive (which had grub files on it) is gone and the hard drive detect order has changed.

Where did you install Grub and linux on the original installation, on the MBR of the sata drive? If the ide drive and it is no longer there...this is your answer.

However, since you are getting a grub prompt, I assume that at some point you either alllowed Grub to install to a /boot partition, or on the MBR of the sata drive.

What drive is set in the bios to boot from first?