dual boot FC 5 and XP Home (1/1)SolutionThe problem with reading other posts, is that folks tend to make the same mistakes that the original post thread author did in setting up their system.Let’s take this one step at a time.I gather from your post, that you have a primary partition (FAT32) on the slave drive. Without knowing how you set up Grub makes it a little difficult, but I think that I see the problem.When you do the df command, you should have seen the Linux partitions. It;s important to know their locations, but i will guess;hdb2 = /boothdb3 = /This command only shows what partitions are mounted, not all your partitons. In Fedora, I think the command should be;/sbin/fdisk -l (that’s the letter small case “L”)This will show you all the partitions on the drive, which I guess will be;hda1 = FAT32hdb2 = linux boot partitionhdb3 = “/” the root partitionFedora, if you select the default partitioning option, will make a small boot partition and a large root partition.Switching the boot order in the bios does nothing, as the first partition should be the FAT32 one, with no boot data on it. hence, the no OS boot problem message.Grub is installed on the second partition, which is not set active, not the first partiton that the computer finds booting from the slave drive.Doing the command dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=boot.lnx bs=512 count=1 copies the first 512 byres of data from the Linux partition. but, if the Grub reference files are not on that partition, then you likely will get a boot.ini file that is not 512 bytes. If I remember correctly, ths command assumes that grub is on the root filesystem of the linux drive. You have one boot partition (with grub bootloader data on it – hdb2) and hdb3 is the root partition. Not all the data is there. I bet your boot.lnx file is not 512 bytes in size, correct?One question about your Windows installation. Was this from a full Windows XP retail disk, or the recovery software for the Gateway system?How to fix this depends on your response.My solution? Some will argue with me on this point, but Fedora, with the default installation, assumes that it will boot from the MBR of the primary master drive, or that the first partition with a /boot partition is in fact the first partition on the drive that Fedora is installed on.I never accept the default installation partitioning scheme and always install Grub to the MBR of the primary master drive. You most likely chose the /boot partition of the slave drive.If the windows installation is truely new, with no programs and settings added, then I would reinstall Fedora, choose custom partitioning, pick the large Linux root partition to reinstall to and tell grub to be installed to the MBR (hda) of the primary master drive. This way, all the grub files (the bootloader ones form the current /boot partition and the reference files for grub) are on the same partition, the root, or / partition.The best way to do this is to delete the Linux partitions on the slave drive in Windows, then allow Fedora to make one large partition that you will mark as / on the slave drive, using the custom partitioning choice at the Fedora partitioning utility menu during the Fedora installation.You keep the FAT32 partition this way for storing files to be read and edited in both Fedora and Windows (to share files needed using both operating systems).
