Fedora 8 GRUB Help

[Huntsman191]

I currently dual-boot a desktop computer with Fedora 8 and Windows XP. It is set to for a default boot into Fedora which it has done succesfully for a while now but today i decided to boot into Windows for some quick windows work. Now i cant boot into Linux. I tried restoring linux and editing the GRUB file using this article as help.

How to edit your GRUB.conf [Archive] - FedoraForum.org

Even after editing i still cannot get Linux to boot. It still boots windows. Even when i change Windows root partition to an empty partition!

Can anyone please help me we this? Thanks.

[yancek]

I would suggest using your Fedora installation CD (or any Live CD) in rescue mode to get partition information. Run 'fdisk -l' command as root and post output. What was the 'quick windows work' you did? Just logging in to windows should not cause boot problems. Did you have any problems logging iinto or out of windows, error messages? Any errors when your try to log into Fedora?

[Huntsman191]

Heres the output from fdisk -l:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 734 5549008 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda2* 735 7506 51196320 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 7507 211175 103337640 f W95 Ext'd
/dev/sda5 7507 21051 102400000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 21052 21078 204088 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 21079 21175 733288 8e Linux LVM

The quick windows work was logging on, putting a Word document onto a USB drive and logging off and shutting down. Do you think perhaps when i booted windows it set windows as the default rather than Fedora? and there was no error messages when logging into and out of windows. sda5 is the drive containing fedora and is the root partition. while sda6 has /boot. Windows still works fine but Linux just wont boot.

[yancek]

Logging in and out of xp after copying a document should not have an effect on booting. Did you have to make any change to the BIOS in order to copy to the USB? I assume you were booting from Grub previously? If so, the simplest thing would be to re-install Grub. Use your Fedora CD and log on as root and type 'grub' at the command prompt. You will get the grub prompt (grub>), enter:


root (hd0,5)
setup (hd0)
quit

(hd0,5) is your boot partition so to verify that is correct you could check to see that your vmlinuz and initrd files are there from the grub prompt:

grub> find /vmlinuz
grub> find /boot/vmlinuz
grub> find /sbin/init

The output of these commands should tell you the correct partition to put above to re-install grub.

[Huntsman191]

ive managed to boot into linux again.. but it still is windows default and i have to choose on a Fedora menu.. how can i make Fedora the default again? and eliminate the menu..

[devils casper]

Post the contents of /boot/grub/grub.conf file here.

[Huntsman191]

Heres the output of grub.conf:

default=1
timeout=0
splashimage=(hd0,5)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.23.1-42.fc
root (hd0,5)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.23.1-42.fc8 ro root=LABEL=/ rhb quiet
initrd /initrd-2.6.23.1-42.fc8.img

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

[devils casper]

* Set default value to 0 -- Fedora will boot up by default.

* Remove # sign before hiddenmenu line -- GRUB will not appear at start up.

*Set timeout value to 4 --- Whenever you press Esc key at startup within 4 seconds, GRUB Menu will apear and you will able to select Windows OS from the list.

default=0
timeout=4
splashimage=(hd0,5)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu

[Huntsman191]

Thanks Devil Casper.. Thank you for your quick reply and your simple answer to the question.. Thanks..