How to make a linux boot disk/CD

[Jake Bullett]

Hello, I have an Athlon64 system with two hard disks. A 120GB primary disk with Windows XP Pro installed on it. And a 60GB slave drive with Fedora Core 4 64-bit on it. Ok, so I put the boot loader, GRUB, on the Linux drive and not on the MBR of the primary disk. Well now I can't get Linux to boot of course. I go into boot option and select the secondary drive too boot from, but it will just go to black screen for a second then boot Windows. How can I make a boot disk to boot to Linux. I didn't see an option in the install process.

If I do install the boot loader on the MBR of hda I assume it will overwrite the Windows bootloader? If for some reason later I want to remove the Linux install by removing or wiping the second drive will I be able to load Windows still?

How can I get the Windows Boot Loader to boot the Linux install?

Thanks for any help. I'm trying to test the Linux waters out and see how it runs on my machine.

[nalg0rath]

To boot linux you can put a bootloader on a floppy, you can do this from Windows. Using SBM(btmgr.webframe.org) is very easy. Boot from the floppy and select the second HD.

Yes, if you install a Linux bootloader on the MBR you overwrite the Windows bootloader. If you remove Linux you can still use the linux bootloader to boot Windows (as a memory of better times) or you can boot from the Windows installcd and open Rescue Promps (or something like that...) and run:

# fixmbr

... and you can't get the Windows default bootloader to boot Linux.

[Jake Bullett]

Thanks!

[Jake Bullett]

I've got another question. I already have Linux installed on hdb, with the bootloader on that same disk. How can I install the boot loader on the MBR of hda without doing an entire reinstall of Fedora?