I never thought this day would come, but it did. I recently acquired Fedora Core 3 on a DVD and I thought I'd give it a bash. Installed it, and man this is great. Except, I dont have any games for Linux. So I thought, why not dual boot with XP and have the best of both worlds. Long story short, to setup a dual boot with these two heavy weights, is quite a tricky bussiness.

I got some info on the matter HERE and HERE

When looking at the first page, you'll see that the drive was partitioned with the first partition being NTFS (for XP), and then for Linux and then a partition(FAT32) for the fedora.bin file.

I partition my 40Gig as follows :
20Gig « NTFS for XP »« /dev/hda
19Gig « linux »« /dev/hda5
and the rest « FAT32 »« /dev/hda6
I dont know where or what hda2, 3 & 4 are - maybe my CD/RW & DVD ROM

On the second page, he gives linux commands for copying the fedora.bin file to the FAT32 drive wich btw is called WIN.

The problem

XP is installed on the first partition. Fedora is installed on the second partition(/dev/hda5). When the Fedora installation completes, is promts you to remove disk and click 'reboot'. When I reboot, It goes straight into XP. It doesn't prompt you to choose wich OS you want to use.

What I tried so far

1) I used FDISK to partition my HDD and maybe this is why I'm having problems?

2) I installed Linux with these options as stated in the first page :


3) In the second page, I substituted this given command
« #mount -t msdos /dev/hda5 /win » with
« #mount -t msdos /dev/hda6 /win » because, as I understand,
this is the FAT32 drive called WIN

4) I substituted the next command
« #dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/win/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1 » with
« #dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/win/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1 » because
hda5 is my linux partition

5) What I understand when reading this


The 'if' is for your linux partition, the 'of' is your FAT32 partition.

When doing all this, step by step, I reboot as stated in page 2, but there is no file on the FAT32 drive. What has to happen, is that you have to copy the fedora.bin from your linux partition onto your FAT32 drive, so that you can access the file from XP, and from there its easy to edit the boot.ini and setup the dual boot.

I'm not a hardcore linux user so treat me like a tourist. What you take for common knowlege regarding linux, I probably don't know. I think I'm either misunderstanding the commands or I'm substituting the wrong info. Maybe the drives are partitioned wrong.

Please help. I want Fedora for work and XP for play.
Adieu

Im I dont hva e time to read your reference doc's howevrer a few quicks.

In my experience its alot easier to install GRUB in the MBR, just make sure you have LBA set in your bios. This has never failed me.



Odd fat32 should be -t vfat I cant see any problems with that but to avoid any issue rather use
the correct filesystem.

As for the booting issue, I suspect your boot flag is not set. a posting of a fdisk -l , would help

Hold up there son, your going about this the wrong way!
To dual boot Windows and Linux is actually much easier than you might think.

Always install Windows first, spesially if you are new to Linux, this makes live allot easier.

Now, make sure your hd's are set to LBA in the BIOS, then install Fedora.
When it asks you where to install the boot loader, tell it to install it into the MBR. There is a warning saying it might be dangerous, but I have actuall never seen anyone having trouble with this method.

The Fedora installer will 9/10 cases pick up your windows installation and set up Grub automatically, no worries. Finish the installation and reboot. You will now be greated with the Grub menu asking you which OS to boot.

Easy really, if you are into more expert options, we can help with that too, but this method is by far the easiest for a newbie!

Device Boot Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 3697 7 NTFS
/dev/hda2 3698 4997 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 3698 4972 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 4973 4997 6 FAT32




OK, so what your saying is, change the HDD setting in BIOS, install XP. Reboot, set HDD to LBA in BIOS, install Fedora? Can I change the HDD to LBA in BIOS for both installations?
Is it OK if I make only 2 partitions? First for Xp and the second for Fedora? Or would Fedora prefer the first partition?

What your saying, is way easier than what I've been trying, but atleast I learned a few things along the line. Thanx for the enthusiastic replies.

OFF TOPIC
I have a few other questions regarding GLide (for my VooDoo5) in Fedora but I'll get to those in another post.

Adieu

Well, theoretically it'll work if you install fedora after Doze.

However, I had the same problem as you do because I had a SATA disk with doze on it and an IDE with debian (but that's a Loooonnnnggg story)

You are definately heading in the right direction with the boot.ini
1) You installed GRUB on the boot sector of /dev/hda5 (first sector of boot device) instead of the MBR, so that should be fine
(hmm, I'm wondering, what's the Other option for GRUB? maybe it's wording is a bit weird...)
2) You used "dd if=/dev/hda5 of=/win/fedora.bin bs=512 count=1". That should be fine

Did you umount /win when you were done? (just checking, maybe dma caused the fedora.bin not to write to the disk *shrug*)

Try it again but use -t vfat for the fat32 partition, and umount the disk.
(otherwise use a stiffy drive. Worked for me)

Also, you *might* find that 'doze decided to put it's "system" drive on the fat32 partition (it does that some times, and it's f*ck*ng annoying)
So, your boot.ini *Might* be on the fat32 drive.

And Linux doesn't (in general) care where it's installed, so leave doze on the first partition.

No, just set the BIOS to LBA, for Windows and Linux install Windows, install Linux.

Not counting the SWAP partition, two partitions is enough to begin with, one for windows and one for Fedora, although most of us have various partitions for different filesystems because it is a bit more secure.
Say for instance you have work in you /home folder. Should something happen to your Fedora partition it gets nuked with all the rest of the OS, but should you have your /home on a seperate partition you still have your personal files although the OS got nuked.
In theory one partition is enough for linux, but it is far safer to have at least two one for / and one for /home.

This will change your /etc/fstab to look something like this:

It might differ here and there, but you get the idea.

Oh, by default Fedora creates and extended partition for Linux, that is why you will see that windows is /dev/hda1 and then suddenly the linux partition jumps to /dev/hda5.

Shout if you need more info or join the linux channel on IRC://kalypso.nixus.org #planetnix .

Finally!!! I got it working.

As follows :
Seeing that XP worked, I deleted the remaining partitions under Disk Management. These partitions were the /dev/hda5 & /dev/hda6. I made a partition by combining them, wich gives you approx 10Gig.

I rebooted, went to BIOS and set HDD to LBA mode.
Slapped the Fedora DVD into the drive and installed Fedora. I installed into the MBR.
After install, you reboot. I went into the BIOS again and set HDD to Auto.
After POST, Fedora gives you a blue screen wich prompts you to press 'ENTER' to select any other OS that you may have.
I pressed 'ENTER', and it gave me a choice between Fedora or Other. I chose Other, and what do you know. XP!

Quick Questions

1) I have a onboard SoundCard and a PCI SoundBlaster Live 5.1. In XP, I disabled the onboard card because I use the SoundBlaster. How can I disable the onboard card?
1.2) I also need to know how to activate the sound? All the faders are turned up and a music CD plays, but no sound.

2) I read that there are ways of setting up your FX graphics card. I have a FX5700 Ultra, so is there a specific way to setup this card?

I would like to thank everyone (My_World;Snarf;syn) for their contributions. So far, I've learned alot with all the installing and re installing. The posts were very informative. This is what makes me come back to Planet Mars(Net Forums) because I know the netizens are willing to share knowledge and that no problem is beyond solution.

Adieu

Can you disable the onboard card in the BIOS?



Chances are you do not have the correct modules loaded, and (or maybe bacause) most likely the system doesn't know which card to use.



Go to nvidia's site and download the linux drivers for the card.
Than just compile them

Mmm...me thinks you don't have the little cable from the cd plugged into the soundcard.....you have to plug that in for sound to work in Linux when playing cd's......is there normal sound in linux, eg error sounds, program opening sounds etc? If, so, plug your little cable in then

As for the soundcard, Snarf has hit it on the head, go into Bios, there should be a tab like "onboard peripherals" or something similar, you could disable the onboard soundcard in there.

Which brand and model Mobo you have? Might be the std AC97 sound codec.

Keep us posted,
MrBean.

It's deffinitly plugged in. There are no logon sounds in Fedora, but when I boot with XP, all sound works ; logon,games,even in DosBox

When I go to the sound setup in Fedora, both soundcards are listed. I tried to mute everything from the onboard sound, but its as if Fedora does not know wich card to use.


I have a ASUS A7V600 MB.

I'll check in the BIOS over the weekend.
Thnx for all the help so far.

Adieu