Sorry about the confusion. I should have been more clear.
 
I wanted to know what the cable assignment was (location), which you also answered.
 
Some may not agree, but this is a Dell system with the recovery partition on hda1, so your Windows system is on hda2.
 
The issue as I see it is the designation of the jumpers on the hard drives. These need to be set correctly first, since you have two different makes of hard drives in the system. Consult the Western Digital users manual for the drive in your system.
 
You need to have the Maxtor as the primary drive, as It has the Dell recovery partition there and Windows XP, which I assume was pre-installed on the system. The cable position is ok (upper most pin connection).
 
Your cable assignments look ok, as they should be. But, was the Maxtor set to cable select before you started all this?
 
This is where the documentaion comes in. Two different makes of hard drives sometimes have to be set a certain way for the system bios to see both drives correctly, per the jumpers.
 
Many drives have no jumper set to use the drive as slave. So, there is no jumper used at all. Make sure the Western Digital is set correctly as slave, per the manual.
 
The issue is how were the drives set originally when you installed Fedora? This should be your starting point.
 
Failing this is the issue, try setting both drives as cable select and see what happens. This is often not correct, but in your case may need to be what happens.
 
You have tried too many solutions to tell what grub conf file (menu.lst) is being referenced, but fdisk -l seems to see the drives as Maxtor as primary master and WD as primary slave.
 
I assume Fedora is on hdb1, but what distro of Linux is on hdb3?
 
Unfortunately, I am going on vacation this am and will not be back for a few days, but others, like darkonc should help sort it out.
 

Thanks for all your help,
 
though it just refuses to work.
 
I've now tried the cable select mode -- no go.
Have looked at the jumper specs for Maxtor (there is no jumper in slave mode, it came as cable select, and worked that way for years)
and for Western (it was set as slave.
 
The menu.lst file I sent above is still my best guess, with WinXP on (hd0,1) and FC4 on (hd1,0) = /dev/hdb1
 
I was going to put Knoppix on /dev/hdb3, but haven't gotten round to it.
 
I'm going to get back to work on the linux side and use the Maxtor as a paperweight for now. Can't spent too much more time on it. You are right, it will not boot windows when the Maxtor is the slave. (But is that the same problem -- it only sees the master?)
 
 
I've just shown my wife how to do her email & word docs in thunderbird & ooffice in FC4. Will try Wine for the one or 2 winApps I occasionally use.
 
Thanks for all your ideas.
 
 

Hi!
It worked for me( First from daneleff). WindowsXP on hda, couple of fat partition on hdb, and fedora core 4 on the rest of the hdb. While installing, grub install option was selected to other boot partition (not MBR):
 
"Glorioso, try this;
 
Boot the Fedora cd disk #1 (installation disk).
 
At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key)
 
Once the system loads, at the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage
 
then;
 
grub-install --recheck/dev/hda
 
This may take a minute or so and should just return a command prompt with no errors. Once it does, type in reboot and see if grub comes up normally."
 
Thx daneloff!!

Hi guys,
 
I'm YALN (Yet another linux newbie).
 
Have found the most boring way to get around this.
 
Treat your second hard drive as a master, accept all defaults but change the drive where you need to.
 
Then just alter your BIOS boot order as and when btween windoze XP and linux.
 
This does work but isn't particularly user friendly, I may actually get round to using the (proper?) settings that I found here:
 
http://www.overclockersclub.com/guides/dual_boot_fedora_xp_4.php
 
Typhoon

Hey there all I came across this web page and I found it particularly interesting since I am just now venturing into the world of Linux (Yeah I'm really green)at 9 for a long while and I tried to install it once before and failed so I just didn't bother. I took it up today and I decided I wanted to go into it indept today. I parttioned my second hard drive with Partiton Magic 7.0 with an 11 GB partition for the installation and again to no avail. It worked a couple times up to a point and froze when I tried different parameters (noprobe, skipddc, text). I am frustrated now and this is my last ditch efforet to find out what to do. Can anyone HELP PLEASE.....Here are my system specs. :
 
Dell 8250
Intel Pentium 4 2.4Ghz
512RDRAM
Phoenix Bios Ver. 4.0
64MB DDR NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 420 with TV Out (Dell)
C-Media CMI8738/C3DX Audio Device
Storage:
* Maxtor 6E040L0 (40 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
* Seagate ST380013A (80 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/100)
* NEC DVD_RW ND-2510A
* SAMSUNG CDRW/DVD SM-348B
* Intel PRO/100 M Network Connection
* Intel 537EP Modem
 
Partitions:
C: (NTFS) (Seagate) 37.2 GB for Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP2
 
D: (NTFS) (Maxtor) 27.39 GB for Data
E: (NTFS) (Seagate) 37.25 for Microsoft Server 2003 SP1
Free Space (10.89) on Maxtor formatted in ext2 for linux by Partition Magic.
 
Pretty simple stuff. At first I thought it might have been the BIOS causing the system to hang so I flashed it a couple of months ago from the Version 1.0. Hook me up here...
 

Wildcard26, look at your original thread that you started. You are using Redhat 9, not Fedora. Try moving to Fedora Core 4 for your system, which should have better hardware detection for your system.

Ok thanks I'll get my hands on a copy of it and give it a go. I'll get back to you

15,225 reads on this thread????
 
Someone should do a how-to article.

Glorioso idea seems to fix this issue; but when I had two different disks for install; I dont see /dev/hda instead I have /dev/sda; and doing so; all worked. Here is the steps:
 
1. Boot the Fedora cd disk #1/DVD (installation disk).
2. At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key)
3. Once the system loads, at the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage
4. then; grub-install --recheck /dev/hda or grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
 
then reboot
 
Thanks
http://www.msvistablog.net/

If your booting straight into sata drives, there is no hda, but only sda (unless you also have ide drives on the system).
 
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda rechecks the disk order and assigns designations in that order, installing grub on sda. If your Windows installation is on the first sata drive, and you have the bios set to boot sata first, then this is good.
 
grub-install --recheck /dev/hda installes grub on the primary master ide drive. If Windows is on the primary master, in an ide only system, then this is fine.
 
Where folks get into trouble, is thinking that they need to switch out the boot order in the bios. You should not change the boot order in the bios before or after installing Linux. There is no need to do this. Doing so only complicates matters, confuses grub and your windows boot.ini is also pointing to the wrong drive and partition as well.

Hi Danleff,
 
I tried everything and still no success. I read everything regarding this topic.. maybe i'm doing something wrong..
I have a 80G sata drive alone.
First situation:
Win XP is on the first partition: hd0,0 or sda1 (15G)
other 2 ntfs partitions (sda4=extended) sda5(30G),sda6(25G),remaining free space is 5G.
I installed Fedora Core 4 (making a separate /boot partition) on the last 5G free. Everything works fine (i've tried it many times with different configs) but in the end no matter where I install grub, mbr or the first sector of the /boot partition (i've tried the solution with dual-booting by using boot.ini) the same stupid thing happens:
I get a grub > prompt and from there nothing goes.. the root command shows the right /boot partition (hd0,</boot_partition_number>).
devices are ok: fd and hd0=/dev/sda
 
Second situation:
Everything is the same, but I moved the Windows system partition 350 M to the right and I created the /boot partition there, thinking it might have been because of the location outside the first 1024 cylinder boundary.. the same result: no matter how I try to dual boot I just get the grub prompt.
 
Third situation:
I burned the Fedora core 5 beta iso and installed it. Grub menu showed with the two options:FC4 and Win XP, after installing it on the mbr. So although the system didn't boot properly (I wasn't interested to) the loader installed itself on the mbr perfectly with no "extra" options as some would say...
 
I've reviewed your advice to the others many times and couldn't get the boot menu.. it just gives me the grub prompt.
 
Any ideas?
 
 

OK, let's be clear on what is happening.
 
You can currently boot into FC4, but not Windows?
 
Always start out with a plan. What you did is start out with a plan and changed it several times. When something does not work right off, folks panic and start changing things randomly.
 
As you can probably tell, Fedora has been a problem, as there are several posts on the subject of dual booting.
 
In my opinion, it's related to folks not sticking to a plan and not knowing how to set up a dual boot system properly. Not good for newbies.
 
Fedora, by default, makes a boot partition on your hard drive, if you allow the installation to handle to partitioning for you. it assumes that you are installing Fedora as the only OS on your system, or on a seperate hard drive (waits for flames from Fedora users).
 
This is a problem and also a feature.
 
Fedora, I believe, is a Linux OS meant for moderate to expert users of Linux. My opinion.
 
I wish we had more experienced Fedora users here to respond.
 
First, you don't need a /boot partition when installing Grub to the MBR. My opinion. this complicates things and frustrates new users. That said;
 
 

Quote:but in the end no matter where I install grub, mbr or the first sector of the /boot partition (i've tried the solution with dual-booting by using boot.ini) the same stupid thing happens:  
First issue. Do not randomly change where Grub is installed, or how the sysem boots. Better to figure out what the problem is if Fedora is booting OK.
 
Most of the time, I believe is that folks pick the wrong options during the Fedora install as the default OS to boot. It should always be Fedora.
 

Quote:Second situation:Everything is the same, but I moved the Windows system partition 350 M to the right and I created the /boot partition there, thinking it might have been because of the location outside the first 1024 cylinder boundary.. the same result: no matter how I try to dual boot I just get the grub prompt.
 
Now what you did is change the order of the partitions. Was this change done as a re-installation of Fedora, or how did you change the actual location of the /boot partition?
 
Does Fedora still boot?
 
What you have now done is change the physical logical location of the partitions, so if the Windows boot.ini is found at all, it points to the wrong system files location for Windows.
 

Quote:Third situation:I burned the Fedora core 5 beta iso and installed it. Grub menu showed with the two options:FC4 and Win XP, after installing it on the mbr. So although the system didn't boot properly (I wasn't interested to) the loader installed itself on the mbr perfectly with no "extra" options as some would say...
 
So, what does this mean? Are you able to boot Fedora at all, or neither Fedora or Windows? And...I assume this is the last thing that you tried? Where is the /boot partition now?