Dual-boot RedHat + Win2000 w/ BootMagic: RedHat won't boot

[attilathepun]

Hi,
I had a system running Win2000, with the following drive setup:
8Gig [Windows] NTFS
~=32 Gig [Data] NTFS

After moving the partition (not enough room for Windows), I did the following with PartitionMagic before setting up Linux:
31Mb [BootMagic] Fat16
12.5Gb [Windows] NTFS
10Gb [RedHat Linux] 2
1Gb [Linux swap] swap
~=14Gb [Data] NTFS (I plan to change this to Vfat so both OS can access)

Before installing RedHat, I went to BootMagic and told it to recognize the Linux partition so that, after install, it should pick up on Linux.

When I installed RedHat, the only changes I made were to declare the Linux partition as the root sector and, as a precaution, I formatted both it and the swap disk.
The install went fine, so I rebooted, chose Windows, and loaded BootMagic to make sure it recognized Linux (I had not yet hidden the BootMagic partition). Although it was still set up to recognize the Linux partition as an OS partition, and the choice shows up in the menu when you start up, both BootMagic and PartitionMagic say there's a bad partition. PartitionMagic won't load, it just says there's a bad partition and exits. Through PartitionMagic's drive information tools, I was able to pick up that the problem is in the Linux partition.

RedHat runs just fine if I use the bootdisk to start it, but if I select the Linux option in BootMagic it doesn't even initialize the process. (oh, btw, Windows works just fine).
If anyone knows how to fix this, I would greatly appreciate it.

[drakebasher]

Any reason not to use Grub as the bootloader? If you can get your Linux up from the install CD, Grub should be a breeze to install and configure.


A good reference: Grub From the Ground Up

[aaron.d]

grub or at very least lilo as your boot loader.

read about each of these and learn the make entries in their respective configuration files.

then if you have troubles, its most likely a problem that can be addressed here.