Much trouble getting dual-boot working

From: Fran Fabrizio (fran_at_cis.uab.edu)
Date: 02/27/04

  • Next message: Bevan C. Bennett: "Re: Broken Pipe Error Message" 
    To: fedora-list@redhat.com
Date: Fri, 27 Feb 2004 11:34:22 -0600

    There's so much conflicting advice out there (put it in the MBR! Don't
    put it in the MBR! etc...) that after six unsuccessful tries, I'm just
    throwing myself at your feet and begging for mercy... :-)

    1 120G SATA drive, came pre-loaded from Dell with WinXP on an NTFS
    partition. I used Partition Magic to setup the following partitions:

    In this order on the drive...

    1. Very small Dell Utility partition
    2. A 200MB ext3 partition to use for /boot
    3. A ~60G NTFS partition with WinXP on it
    4. A ~55G ext3 partition to use for /
    5. A Swap partition with the rest of the space

    I put #2 where it is because I read that the boot partition should be
    before the 1024th cylinder.

    I then installed Fedora Core. It can't create a boot disk because it
    says it won't fit on a floppy. :-/

    In the Grub configuration, I've tried both to install it to the MBR and
    to the first part of the boot partition. Neither of these work - the
    machine still boots into WinXP directly.

    If I use PartitionMagic's BootMagic utility to tell the machine to boot
    off of partition #2, I get the Grub menu, and Fedora boots just fine,
    but WinXP errors during boot.

    If I then use BootMagic to reset the boot partition to #3, WinXP works
    again, but the machine boots directly to it.

    So my questions are now:

    1. Do I have the partition table correct?
    2. Where should I install the boot partition?
    3. Do I have to start the Fedora install over yet again, or can I just
    reset the bootloader settings to the right stuff?
    4. What's the proper sequence from the start so that I can do this
    correctly on the first try next time?

    Really appreciate your help - I've never had so much trouble setting up
    a dual boot, but it's never involved NTFS before. :-(

    Thanks,
    Fran 

    -- 
Fran Fabrizio
Senior Systems Analyst
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
University of Alabama - Birmingham
fran@cis.uab.edu
(205) 934-0653
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  • Next message: Bevan C. Bennett: "Re: Broken Pipe Error Message"

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