Dual Boot Problem... Plz Help

[k_sanjay]

I am a newbie to Linux.. I downloaded the 4 ISO's of Fedora Core 3 and burnt them and successfully installed Linux. After the installation finished, the computer rebooted.
But instead of a screen where i can select between XP and Fedora Core 3..... the computer automatically booted into XP....
I am not being able to get into FC3.


Please help

[alpha_dk]

did you make a 3.5" boot disk for your fedora installation? if you did then you can use that to boot your fedora and from there you can configure your /etc/grub.conf.

either your timeout is set to 0 in grub.conf or your grub was not sent to the mbr. if your grub was not sent to the mbr because you didnt want it there then you have to change your boot.ini in win xp to tell it to go to grub but using nested boot loaders doesnt make any sense to me (eg telling one boot loader to run another boot loader has no benefit that i can think of).

the following link might be helpful.
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/man...b-install.html

[k_sanjay]

thanks for those suggestions... i checked a bit more... and i think that GRUB has not installed itself at all! I tried running the setup again, but still it fails to install....

Is there any other way by which I can boot into FC3 ?? Like, maybe changing the boot.ini file. If so, please tell me how to go about it..

[budman7]

When you were installing Fedora, did you have a section where you were asked quiestions about which bootloader, LiLo or Grub?
Where you wanted to put it, root partition or MBR? Should be on the MBR.

[k_sanjay]

Well..... i didnt get a choice as to which bootloader, they gave me GRUB.
And yeah... first time i selected MBR, it didnt get loaded.. 2nd time i tried the 2nd option... still the bootloader does not work.

The computer automatically boots into XP

[k_sanjay]

hey, i think i just managed to fix my FC3. The problem lay somewhere in the partitioning section. I tried installing FC3 once more using automatic partitioning... and presto!! IT WORKED!!

But now, am confronted with another problem... my screen resolution goes up to only 800 * 600.
My video card is VIA S3 Unichrome. I have a windows driver for it, but, i dont have a linux driver. When I check my display settings in FC3, it shows the video card as S3 Unichrome. Please help!

[budman7]

You are going to need to edit the XF86Config-4 file from the command line. If you are in the GUI, use Ctrl + Alt + Backspace

vi /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

Go near the bottom of the file, use the SPACE bar or down arrow, till you get to the screen section.
Type " i " to bring you to INSERT mode, add the resolutions you want.
Example, if you want 1024x768 to be the default, put it first.
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

Then "startx"

Hope this helps.

[k_sanjay]

hi,

thanks for those suggestions, but i managed to solve it by just adding a moniter.... so am all clear for now!!

c ya