Dual Boot xp on sata master/fedora 5 on ide master

[Firechicken 0]

Hello guys, this seems to be the best place for help with this so here goes, and danleff if you reply I know you must be getting tired of this q and a being asked over and over again, I have read for about 5 days and still am a bit frusterated with getting this to work out. heres my trouble:

 

I Would like to install fedora 5 on my new ide hdd.

 

I have windows xp installed on my sata hdd, I have a full retail version of xp also.

 

The IDE drive is seen as hda

 

The SATA drive is seen as sda

 

In my bios set up the first sata drive is number 3 eg.

 

ide master plug is labled 1

ide secondary plug is labled 2

sata ports (i only have 2 onboard sata ports and no others)

3 and 4. (only have one sata hdd on port 3,)

 

I am unsure what to do here, I have xp installed on the sda drive, and would like to install fedora 5 on the ide master hda

 

It dosnt matter to me which drive will be the master in which I boot from, and just would like to set it up in a way you all know it works well so i am flexable in what to do here.

 

I have tried this 2 times and both times I used default set up and after reading your posts and reply's here this is a nono and explains why this isnt working for me, each time the dual boot menu would come up with a fedora splash screen with a timer on my first install saying continueing to boot to fedora in 3.2.1, and the second install last night, with the same screen saying booting to windows in 3,2,1. on both installs the default boot always booted into it's operating system after left to count down and continue, the first went to fedora if left, and the second would go to xp, unless i hit a key and select.

On both of those set ups when i hit a key to select lets say on my second install i tried, it would boot into xp no problem if left to count down, when I selected fedora, i get a screen with the chain loader info but then it would always just freeze and not do anything, the same is true with the first install which did the same thing, only diff there was the default boot os, was fedora.

 

So to sum it all up I would like to keep my windows install on the sata drive, and put fedora 5 on the primary ide drive. I was hoping you could outline a procedure i might try for this, every other set up i read up on and tryd didnt work out, and me being a beginer at linux isnt making this any easier either. Thank you so much for any guidance or help you might have. Michael

 

 

[danleff 0]

I have a very long winded explanation for this. Believe me, I have multiple drives on my system, three IDE drives and 2 sata drives and still don't know how I did it.

 

Can you post the make and model of your motherboard, so I can look at the users manual?

 

Then the long winded description...and hopefully I can really finish my article on this and get the final version on my website!

[Firechicken 0]

Hi danleff, I really appreciate your time in helping me work this out, i'm so silly I forgot to put those specs up. The motherboard is an Asus k8n socket 754 (not the k8n-e) I have included the link to the Asus k8n manual below.

 

 

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=K8N

 

 

If you would like me to try anything new out for you than I would be glad to do so, in case you needed some more testing to get your article done.

 

I'm not too sure what else you might want or need to look at but I would be glad to get any other specs and info for you.

 

 

Also just to clarify my mess of a post here, the primary master ide has the ide hdd waiting for linux, and has no other connection running off of that as a slave. I used my secondary ide for my two cd rom and dvd combo to run off of master and slave like. Also am installing the 64 bit version of the fedora 5 core. I will check back here often. thanks a million, michael.

 

[danleff 0]

Ok, let's look at what you have.

 

The motherboard has the following hard drive connectors;

 

Primary IDE The hard drive is properly jumpered for primary master and attached to the outermost connector, at the end of the ribbon cable?

 

Secondary IDE

 

sata1 connector

 

sata2 connector

 

Where is the sata drive connected to, sata 1 or 2?

 

Fedora defaults installing to the primary master drive (usually), unless you tell it otherwise. You need to watch the message screen (at the bootloader options menu, during the installation) to see where grub is being defaulted to.

 

The default OS to boot depends on what OS you ticked during the Grub install screen, Fedora or Windows.

 

Quote:

On both of those set ups when i hit a key to select lets say on my second install i tried, it would boot into xp no problem if left to count down, when I selected fedora, i get a screen with the chain loader info but then it would always just freeze and not do anything, the same is true with the first install which did the same thing, only diff there was the default boot os, was fedora.

 

Unless you actually highlight a grub entry at the boot screen and hit the enter key, the default OS always boots.

 

You should never get a chainloader message when booting Fedora, in a default installation of Fedora. This message usually occurs when the XP installation reference is incorrect and the text displays and hangs when grub can't find the boot.ini file for Windows. If you were able to look at the grub.conf file, you would see that it uses the chainloader option, not under the Fedora boot references. Of course, I have seen one other Linux OS do this if it detects anther OS on the system, even if it was a Linux installation.

 

This leads me to believe one of two things, based on your quote that I referenced above.

 

1. At some point, the bios boot order was changed before installing Fedora.

 

2. During one of your attempted installations, you did get into the advanced bootloader options, but set the first hard drive detection order incorrectly.

 

3. You have changed the boot order in the bios at some point in an attempt to get both operating systems to boot.

 

4. On one of your "default" installations, you left the sata drive (sda) box ticked (did not untick the sata drive) when asked to delete any linux partitions and use that drive as part of the Fedora installation process. I'm not sure what effect this would have, but one guess would be that Fedora installed a /boot partition on the sata drive, which would explain why you are getting a chainloader message, or failed to boot into Fedora. If this were the case, since you had two installations of Fedora, it's possible that you have two /boot partitions, one on the sata drive and one on the second IDE drive. therefore, the partitions are mucked up.

 

But, as it stands now, does either OS boot up when you highlight and actually select (hit the enter key) to choose that OS to boot?

 

[Firechicken 0]

Thank you, again for the reply.

 

Primary master drive jumper is set to master and attached to the outermost connector at the end of the ribbon cable.

 

Primary slave- nothing attached.

 

Secondary ide- master combo drive (dvd/rw ect.)

Secondary Slave- Cd rom drive.

 

The sata drive is connected to sata port 1

 

 

Yes you are right about me changing things in the bios, and trying a little different setup during the second install in hope's of learning what to try to get it to work.

 

I know that changing boot order in bios is no good now after reading your other posts, and am not too sure which drive to leave set up asthe first boot drive. I have only just installed it for the second time last night to try and figure it out, and am tottaly willing to re-install/format/partition, the ide drive i would like to install linux on.

 

When in the fedora os boot menue (after hitting enter or any key to select the os i would like) I can select the fedora instalation hit enter and it boots up no trouble at all.

When I try to select or let timer count down for default os (in my case this time windows xp) I get the following on the screen:

 

Booting XP

rootnoverify (hd1,0)

chainloader +1

 

 

And of course when i change the boot order in bios to set my sata drive to boot,instead of the ide drive, it then just loads right to windows, as if thats all that were there.

 

So now i am not sure if I can fix the set up to work, or if i should just go ahead and re install linux on the ide drive again.

 

Thank you again for your trouble. Michael

 

[danleff 0]

OK, then grub has installed itself on the primary master (hda) drive and not the sata drive. So, the Windows bootloader is intact on the sata drive. When you try to boot from the ide drive, XP is not found, because you changed the logical order of the drives at boot. Grub, therefore, is looking for the Windows boot.ini file in the incorrect place, based on the boot order when Fedora was installed.

 

This is fixable. But it is advisable to reinstall correctly, to boot from the sata drive. To do so, you must change the drive order of grub, during the installation. this is the easiest way to do it, without a hassle. Let me work on my article and see if I can get it up soon, to describe how to do this. If you want to keep the ide drive as the boot drive, let me know, but expect to learn how to do so!

[Firechicken 0]

Great danleff, thank you very much, I had thought that might have been what was going on after reading through all the dual boot issues here, but being a beginer I was a bit weary of losing my windows install on my sata drive if I did somthing silly lol.

 

I would have no problem having to reinstall again, I learn that much more about linux. I would also like to use the sata drive as the boot drive if thats the easiest,aswell as being my main drive too. So I gather I will have to set my sata drive set up as boot drive in the bios before i install anything. I await your article with excitement. Michael

 

Thank you for all this.

 

[danleff 0]

The article is coming along. The link to the total article is here.

 

The link to the correct installation with the advanced bootloader options is here.

 

The link to recovering the current installation (I hope) is located here.

 

[Firechicken 0]

Hi danleff, sorry for the late reply. Thank you very much for all your help, and your article was well worth it to wait it out, very well done that has to be the best article and how to I have ever found on linux, and fedora to boot, (no pun intended 8). Everything is working well now and I also learned alot more about booting with linux, and just overall learning from someone that know's what's going on. I really was stumped on that one and you really went into great detail and got the message to me (a beginer) in ways that i could start to understand and apply what I read there.

 

Anyways just wanted to give you my thanks and appreciation for all your help and helping another member with the dual boot issues which it looks like you have been doing alot around here, so the article will be of huge value to others. I know it was for me. Thanks a million hope I can do somthing like this for others one day aswell. Take care. MD.

 

[danleff 0]

Thanks for the feedback! I do appreciate it.

 

I'm sure that I will add more material, say regarding HP machines that have a recovery partition that can muck up the works.