Problems with Boot Loaders

[halfpower]

I have a computer with two SATA hard drives (JBOD). I have Windows on one drive and Fedora4 x86_64 on the other. When I installed Fedora it was suppose to install the Grub boot loader on my Windows hard drive. I don't know if it did or not, but when I boot up my computer, it just goes to the Windows boot loader. I'm not sure why it does this. I had earlier installed Ubuntu on one of my hard drives, and it loaded Grub. I later over wrote this with some boot loader utility thing that comes with Windows. Does anyone know how I can get Grub back or, possibly by some other means, boot up Fedora?

 

[keeleysam]

boot from the fedora dvd and do an upgrade isntall and redo GRUB

 

[halfpower]

Originally posted by: keeleysam
boot from the fedora dvd and do an upgrade isntall and redo GRUB

I tried loading grub onto both my hard drives. When I boot to my Windows drive my computer just runs the Windows boot loader that set up a week ago. When I boot to the other drive i get something that resembels the following:

GRUB error
15

 

[raghu1111]

Post your grub.conf file. when to 'boot to other drive' I am assuming you mean selecting second disk at the boot time. Was the windows boot loader set up after fedora 4?

 

[KeyserSoze]

Not to hijack your thread, but I'm having a similar problem possibly. Everytime I'm trying to install Fedora, halfway through the install it just restarts, and takes me back to the Fedora screen to restart the install. Then I choose it, and it starts with the beginnning of the install options.

Very annoying. Right now, I'm installing a 'minimal' install with no extra programs. Hopefully this will work. When it jumps out, and I reboot, nothing. I was thinking that maybe the install just finished, but no GRUB at all, it just goes straight into Windows.

Any ideas?!?!?



KS

 

[halfpower]

Originally posted by: raghu1111

Post your grub.conf file. when to 'boot to other drive' I am assuming you mean selecting second disk at the boot time. Was the windows boot loader set up after fedora 4?

The windows boot loader was setup after Ubuntu installed GRUB. I installed it to replace GRUB. When I installed Fedora GRUB was reinstalled.

When I say boot to the other drive, I mean that the BIOS tries to boot to it. I tried to install GRUB on both drives.

As for grub.conf I don't know where I would find it, or how I could read it.

 

[raghu1111]

Ok, yeah, you were not able to boot into Fedora. The file is located at /boot/grub/grub.conf on FC4 disk which you can see once you are able to boot . But if you can boot with knoppix CD, you can see the file on second disk (hdb).

Now, it will take some patience to fix these problems. If you really want to get this to work, it can be done. First, when you boot into Windows on the first disk, does the BIOS directly sho Widows logo or do you see GRUB screen first which boots windows?

Good luck. I have been in these situations before.. it feels good once you solve them

Raghu.

 

[halfpower]

The BIOS loads the Microsoft boot loader. This automaticaly loads Windows after thirty seconds.

 

[TGS]

If you have two bootloaders, on each drive, you need to change your BIOS settings to boot from either Disk.

Try changing your BIOS settings to boot from the 2nd disk, and see where it gets you. If grub is still setup correctly, you should see the grub splash screen.

If it's not, you can use the windows to linux boot method through images, and just use ntloader. Or you can boot from the above mentioned knoppix or whatever bootable cd, and install grub again.

If you have problems in the future, make the boot disk after the normal fedora install. Then you can get around a misloaded bootloader.

It's also handy to have at least one floppy that you can load grub or lilo from in situations such as these.

 

[halfpower]

I think the problem has to do with the FIXMBR command that I ran when I was overwriting the GRUB loader that Ubuntu installed.

I can boot to the Fedora drive by pushing F8 at start up and selecting the desired device from a list from a list.

 

[raghu1111]

Originally posted by: halfpower
I think the problem has to do with the FIXMBR command that I ran when I was overwriting the GRUB loader that Ubuntu installed.

I can boot to the Fedora drive by pushing F8 at start up and selecting the desired device from a list from a list.

hmm.. so you are able to run Fedora then?

If not, assuming fedora is on second disk (/dev/hda), just try this:

boot with knoppix cd, and mount your fedora root partition (if it is not already), say it is /mnt/fedoraroot/. Check if there is /mnt/fedoraroot/boot/grub/grub.conf that is installed by FC install.

grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/fedoraroot/ /dev/hdb

Now try to boot from the second disk.