Problems with dual booting

[Icu2 0]

Well,

I have bought a new pc and installed winXP + winME on it 80Gb and i have an old hdd 8Gb with fc3. I have used the fc3 about a half a year so im not really experienced. So i want to have all those 3 OS or least winXP and FC3. So could someone write me the step by step configuration for running it. now i can run XP and ME from the main hdd and FC3 from the second and if i try connect both hdd's only windows laucher starts. Grub installed in fc3 hdd.

[danleff 0]

Posting how-to's is generally too long for a forum like this. Your situation prompts me to ask several questions. Bear with me.

 

First of all, have a plan. What make amd model PC is this? Yes, it does make a difference.

 

Do you have a full installation CD of windows XP? Not pre-installed, correct?

 

Do you know how to jumper hard drives correctly? Why you ask? Your quote;

 

Quote:

now i can run XP and ME from the main hdd and FC3 from the second and if i try connect both hdd's only windows laucher starts. Grub installed in fc3 hdd.

 

Of course! Your main 80 gig drive is jumpered as the primary master, so it is the boot drive. When you added the second drive, did you jumper it to slave? I assume that it was master on the old system? Just adding the second drive will not get you to grub, unless you changed how the hard drives were jumpered and cabled.

 

Or, if you changed the boot order in the bios, then you could boot (in theory) from that drive and get grub. But, since Windows is not conmfigured in Grub on the FC3 drive for this system and how it is set up, you will not be able to boot Windows. That would have to be added through Fedora.

 

However, personally, I would not trust an old 8 gig drive as reliable. I assume that you had it for some time. Realize that drives do have life spans. Say on average 5 years, depending on the amount of usage.

 

Is there any reason that you need Windows ME? It is outdated and no longer supported by Microsoft. if you do, move on.

 

I would buy another hard drive and install Fedora Core 4 on that drive. Why? You have a new computer and it is very likely that hardware support with FC4 is probably much better for the new system (as I don't know what the new system is, I can't comment on support through Fedora Core 3). This is one good reason to post what your current system is.

 

Also, I assume that your XP installation is on an NTFS partiton and earlier versions of Fedora had problems with this during the partitioning phase of installation. So, if you decided to get rid of Win ME and use that space to re-install Fedora (and get grub on the MBR of the primary master drive), use Fedora Core 4. Better to be safe.

 

You can always add the old 8 gig drive with FC3 to the system to recover and old data files from that drive.

 

By reading these forums, you may have noticed that a lot of folks are having trouble with FC4 and dual booting there systems. Most of the issues, I believe are do to making a mistake when installing Fedora's grub, partioning there drives correctly, or trying to mess with there partitions after an installation. This is one reason to install Fedora on a seperate hard drive to assure that you have XP intact and booting.

 

Of course, I would say get rid of XP and just use Fedora! But aI realize that this is not always feasible, or folks don't think it is feasible. That's another argument.

 

So, have a plan and assure a backup to recover from any mistakes!

 

A full install cd of XP.

 

A full set of Fedora CD disks.

 

Know what you are going to do before you install your OS' - don't try to change things later on.