Problem: Fedora C4 on D410

Question

Hi,

I just want to share some problem that I encountered with dual-booting my XP Pro with Fedora C4 on my D410.

I used Partition Magic to shrink the NTFS partition to make room for Fedora. (about 30GB)I installed Core 4 and use the Linux bootloader (GRUB?) to dual-boot XP and Linux defaulting to XP.

After a few weeks of use, I encountered a blue screen when starting XP complaining something about not able to locate hive files. I rebooted to the "Last Known Good Config.." and everything is fine.

About a couple of weeks later, I encountered the same error trying to boot to XP. Now both times I did a normal shutdown in XP. This time the "Last Known Good Config" didn't help. To make things worst, I cannot boot-up with the XP CD that comes with the laptop or for that matter any XP Pro CD. It will read the CD and say something about "Setup is reading..." then it goes to a blank screen and the CD spin down. I tried using XP setup disketted to boot but once it got to reading the CD, I get a blue screen with a "STOP" error.

Eventually, I have to boot with Win98 diskette and use FDISK to remove all partitions. I have since reinstall XP!

fulch92a · Answer

Try installing grub to the root partition.  Boot up using a boot disk.  As root do **#] dd if=/dev/hda2 *bitesize*=512 count=1 of=/dev/hdc2/linux.ldr **.  This will give you a 512 byte file called linux.ldr in the root directory (not root user directory).  Copy the file to a disk.  Shutdown and boot back into Windows.  Open a command prompt and cd\.  When you get to the root directory, type in attrib -h -r -s boot.ini to un-hide and un-protect the boot.ini file.  edit boot.ini.  On a new line at the end of the file enter c:\linux.ldr='Linux'.  Set the default time out to 30.  Exit editor and save the file.  The attrib +h +r +s boot.ini to re-hide and re-protect the boot.ini file.  Copy the linux.ldr file from the disk to the windows c:\.  Attrib +h +r +s linux.ldr to hide and protect it.  restart windows.   You should get the NTloader and be able to boot into Linux from there.  This allows you to allow windows to maintain control over the MBR instead of passing that luxury to Grub.  That way, none of the linux install needs to even touch the windows partition and you shouldn't have any problems.   **note....Where it says bitesize in the instructions, that should be *b s* without the space but dell has a profanity filter that prevents me from typing that in.**

erroneus · Answer

I have an Ins8600 myself... not a huge difference internally I think.

When I did my install, I wiped out the original OS load, installed XP on a smaller-sized partition (/dev/hda1) and tweaked it all up with drivers and what-not. Next, I installed Fedora Core and got it all tweaked up. Dual booting has always worked perfectly but then again, I didn't resize partitions and perhaps that's where XP is having a cow.

I would consider, if I were you, reinstalling as I did. And until you decide on that route, have you performed any diagnostic scandisks or whatever maintenance utils for NTFS? That might be enough to fix the problem... though I'm actually rather unsure what the problem really is at this point. (could be completely unrelated!)

erroneus · Answer

Actually, I'm using grub as my boot loader.

mlim650 · Answer

Thanks for the advise. I did just that recently and so far the system has been behaving. I guess using NT bootloader is the way to go for Dell.

erroneus · Answer

Actually, I didn't have to mess with anything. FC2 (at the time, but I am at FC4 now) simply installed and added an entry called 'other' to grub.conf. I selected the option for installing to the MBR and I never had to mess with Windows to get it to boot at all. The only time I mess with anything boot related is when I want to pull out older kernels as newer updates are installed. Otherwise, I don't mess with Windows in the least. No tricks, no hurdles... the MBR installation, I knew, would over-write the NT boot loader, but Grub serves that purpose just fine.

fulch92a · Answer

You can use grub as a boot loader. With these Dell systems though, if you want to use grub, you should fdisk and remove all of the partitions, reinstall windows and then install linux with grub on the primary partition. If you use PartitionMagic or some other re-size software, your risk of corrupting your windows boot loader is higher.

If you use linux as your primary OS, then grub will work fine if you start from scratch. If, like me, you use linux primarily for school or research, then you may actually want to use the NTLoader instead of grub so you don't have to mess with anything on the windows partition when installing linux.

But, whatever floats your boat.

fulch92a · Answer

Yes, but when you install Grub to the MBR instead of the root partition, it still changes the MBR which windows uses to boot up.  Actually, the Windows formatted MBR contains a pointer to the boot.ini file which indicates which disk and partition to boot up to for a windows system.  By installing grub to the MBR, the user is infact altering information on the main active partition that controls how windows boots.    In order to prevent grub from altering the MBR, install it to the root partition on which you are installing linux.  Create an MBR type file and add an entry to the boot.ini file identifying where you stored the file on the windows partition.  The windows boot loader will then open the file, go to the location on the partition on which linux was installed that contains the grub boot loader, and boot into linux using grub.  By doing this, you DO NOT have to install ANYTHING to do with linux to the MBR or the windows partition, you merely need to copy a file that can only be executed by the NTloader to the root windows directory.   Your way, installing Grub to the MBR, alters the way windows boots.  Therefore, you are in a sense altering windows in the least.  Usually, grub will boot windows just fine after it overwrites the NTloader, but not always.  When you have a problem like mlim was having, using the NTloader instead of Grub tends to solve it.  You're 100% correct that grub can be used, but when mlim used grub it didn't work.  NTloader is an alternative option to grub which could solve the problem.  Or, delete all the partitions on the HDD, create new ones, then reinstall everything.   That works too.

monlinux · Answer

I know you're trying to help,
but your explaination and understanding seems flawed.

The MBR (512b) contains stage one of (a/the) bootloader which is required by any OS to boot this is not windows specific and windows doesn't own the MBR of a disk or at least it certainly doesn't have too.

By suggesting that writing grub or any other boot loader to the MBR is somehow messing with Windows is a little suspect. How about the case when you've installed Linux then Windows and your Windows install overrights the MBR and you can't boot linux any more?

The MBR is not a partition and not on a partition, though partitions can have BRs.

Dual booting requires cooperation and at there has to be at least one bootloader that writes to the MBR to bootstrap into some sort of menu... writing grub to the MBR does not trash NTloader and is not in any way modifying any windows partition. You're just wrong here.

In my experience, having grub or lilo or any open source (linux centric perhaps) boot loader on my mbr has saved me plenty of pain and problems when there have been isssues with windows or linux. grub has a lot of features that ntloader just doesn't.

You can go the circuitous route that someone else mentioned of saving the BR onto floppies, yadda yadda, and adding linux to NTloader... but you might save yourself alot of time with having created a linux boot disk, or booting into a CD rescue mode (or installing linux second after windows) and simply adding a +chainloader one liner to your grub.conf to add windows to the menu if you were so unlucky as not to have it automagically added by your favourite distribution's installation.

how to install/reinstall and very easily boot windows from grub is left as an exercise for the reader...

fulch92a · Answer

Thank You.

I think that was the answer to one of my Homework assignments. Seems the "circutous route" worked for the OP though. Sorry my explanation wasn't technically correct. I guess you're right. Nothing on the Windows partition is changed when you install Grub to the MBR. I mean, the MBR is changed, and out of the Box Windows does rely on the NTLoader in the MBR to boot, but by changing that, you're not really changing anything on the Windows Partition. Sorry about my flawed understanding.

I still believe that the safest way to install Linux on a drive that you are resizing partitions on is to resize it, install grub on the root linux partition and then put an entry in the NTLoader to point to the BR on the Linux root partition. If you're starting from scratch, perhaps it is wiser to boot from Grub. Either way will work in either situation, it's just been my experience to do them this way for less problems when booting. There have been a few times where I've had to use fdisk /mbr to restore the windows MBR because I had a problem booting to Windows from Grub. And, it's difficult sometimes to get the entry and file into the boot.ini file to boot Linux using the MBR. Everyone has a different level of understanding and a preferred method of doing things.

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Problem: Fedora C4 on D410

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