Fedora Core 3/Windows XP Dual Boot Problem

[Orchrist]

I recently built a new computer with 2 hard drives, an IDE 30gig from my old box and a new SATA 160gig. I installed Windows XP on the 160, cleaned off the 30 and then tried to install Fedora Core 3 on it.

The install went fine, except that during the boot loader configuration it listed the 160 gig boot as "Other" instead of windows. I've never done this before, so I thought maybe that was normal and left it. I set "Other" as the default, put the bootloader on the 30 so as not to mess up my Windows boot in case anything went wrong, and went through with the installation. After it rebooted I made the 30 into the primary drive in the BIOS so that Grub would be used instead of the windows boot loader.

The system booted, went through the loader to boot Other, showed the boot commands (2 lines, something about boot no reply or acknowledge and then +1chainboot or something) and then hung. After rebooting I tried the Fedora boot which went off without a hitch. I switched the drives around in the BOIS again so that windows would load, and that went fine too.

Why doesn't Grub load windows? Any ideas how I can fix this?

-Edit- I should probably mention that I had an earlier installation of Mandrake 10.0 (or 10.1, I can't remember) that DID replace the mbr on the 160. I ended up getting rid of Mandrake because the GUI was all screwy and it didn't support my 6600GT. I put the windows boot record back by booting through the windows install cd and running fixmbr. It seemed to work fine, but I don't know what other problems it might have caused.

Also, on the Fedora installer partition editor screen it does recognize the NTFS file system on the 160, but it doesn't seem to recognize it as windows.

[pbharris]

hello,
my 1st guess is that the SATA drive is on some other controller and GRUB is not seeting it properly - can you boot into Linux and mount your MS Windows partition? If so please post the output of the command mount (executed from withing a terminal) and the contents of the files /boot/grub/device.map and /boot/grub/grub.conf

[Orchrist]

Grub.conf:

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hdb1
default=1
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.9-1.667)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 rhgb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.9-1.667.img
title Other
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

device.map:

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hdb
(hd1) /dev/sda

As you can probably imagine, hdb is the IDE drive and sda is the SATA.

Mount output to follow as soon as I figure out how.

[Orchrist]

Here's what it tells me when I try to mount the SATA:

[root@localhost ~]# mount -t ntfs /dev/sda /mnt/c
mount: fs type ntfs not supported by kernel

Let me know if I'm just doing it wrong.

[pbharris]

nice job so far

The only thing I can see that would be in error is the mount /dev/hda, it should be mount /dev/hda1

Lets get ntfs support for the kernel - well read only support anyway.

here is the how-to, it looks like you already know some stuff so lets show the stuff which is applicable to you

http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=3506#NTFS

* Open the terminal. Type:

su

Hit enter. Type your root password. Hit enter. Type:

uname -r -p

This will output your kernel version and processor type.

* Open Firefox. Go to http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/fedora3.html and download (save to disk) the appropriate NTFS RPM for your kernel version and processor type. (These instructions will help you find the correct RPM: http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/instructions.html.)

* With the root terminal still open type:

rpm -ivh *.rpm
* Type the following in gedit:

/dev/hda1/mnt/cntfsro,defaults,umask=02220 0

Reboot. Your Windows partition should now be available in the file browser under "/mnt/c"

[Orchrist]

Erm, there's no athlon rpm for the 2.6 kernel. Should I just use one of the other ones?

By the way, I've got an Athlon64, although Fedora it doesn't detect it as x86-64. I'm using the 32 bit version of Fedora because I heard that the 64 bit version still has some driver issues. Should I be looking for the athlon rpm or the x86-64 rpm?

[trickster]

Hi,

If you can't find an RPM for your kernel, try this

[Orchrist]

Never mind, according to the rpm query format, I have an i686. I'll go with that.

[Orchrist]

Okay, the rpm seems to be in okay, but why would I type that line into gedit? Which file am I supposed to be adding it to? I tried typing it into the terminal window, but it said "permission denied" even though I'm root.

By the way, you sda1, not hda1, right?

[trickster]

I thinks he means adding that line into /etc/fstab.

That line tells the system how to mount your partition.

Try as root:

gedit /etc/fstab

Then add the line there.