Hi All,

I have WinXP on hda2, and finished installing Fedora (& grub) on hda3. I choose to have grub install on hda3, and not the mbr, so I can use the WinXP bootloader to boot Fedora too.

Well, after installing and rebooting my new installation, I obviously cannot figure out how to access my new installation. What I want to do is to boot into Fedora, pull the bootsector off into a file, and then copy that to a floppy disk. Then I can use that bootsector file to boot my installation with the WinXP bootloader.

How do I boot into my new installation now? Can I use the install CD-ROM to boot it?

TIA,

Scott

you should of made a boot floppy at the end of the installation. You can boot into rescue mode via the cd and make one.

mkbootdisk

also if you installed grub or lilo on your mbr you could have still booted into XP using lilo or grub. fedora found my XP partition just fine and it even auto configed it. It called it dos but it booted just fine

yeah, and you can change the name from DOS to Windows XP or whatever easily too by clicking on it and EDIT

or vi your /boot/grub/grub.conf file laters

cheers

anyweb

Thanks for the answers.

I know that it found my XP partition just fine, and that I can use grub to boot each partition. I'm just trying to be 'anal', and boot with the Win XP bootloader. This way, if I get rid of Fedora, then my XP bootloader is already in tact.

Also, I'm running a Dell D600 Latitude laptop, and thus do not have a floppy drive.

So, is there no way to boot my Fedora install from 'linux rescue' after booting the CD-ROM? Nothing like root boot=/dev/hda3 for example, at the command line?

TIA,

Scott

Ok All,

I got it working the way I wanted. Here it is:

Install Fedora on your HDD the way you want it. In my case:

hda1 = Dell rescue partition (it came that way).
hda2 = Win XP Professional
hda3 = /boot
hda4 = /
hda5 = /swap

With grub, I had it install itself on hda3. At the end of the install Fedora reboots, and so I couldn't strip off the bootsector from hda3 without finding a way to get into my system first. This is where my problem was. I wanted to use the XP bootloader, and not have grub overwrite my mbr. This version of Fedora is test 1, and so I'm sure I"ll be putting something else on sooner or later. The answer....

After rebooting, I quickly insert my Knoppix 3.3 disk and boot it up. I opened a term window, type su, and mount hda3 (mount /dev/hda3, cd /dev/hda3). Then I get the bootsector off by typing: dd if=/dev/hda3 of=/bootsector.fda bs=512 count=1. I rename it by cp /bootsector.fda bootsector.fda.txt. Then I email this to myself using Mozilla.

After rebooting to Windows, opened up Outlook Express and saved my bootsector.fda.txt file to C:\. Opening up a Command Prompt window, I entered:

cd \
attrib -h -r -s boot.ini
copy boot.ini boot.old
notepad boot.ini

Then I add C:\bootsector.fda "Fedora Core test 1" at the end of the file, and changed the "Timeout=30" to "Timeout=5". Saved the boot.ini file, and un-did the attrib settings, and renamed the bootsector.fda.txt file:

attrib +h +r +s boot.ini
rename bootsector.fda.txt bootsector.fda

I then rebooted -- WAMMO! I'm in Fedora.

Life shouldn't be this easy.

hey cool post thanks alot

i have a dell d600 as well lovely notebook !

good for you dude, great info

cheers

anyweb