Fedora 10 installation.A lot are wrong with my PC

[Highjo]

Hello guys!
i'm sure many people have posted this kind of questions but this time i'm sure i'm doing it right.I have 2 hdd.the master has fedora 10 just installed on it s first partition the rest of the partition are ntfs after i remove debian etch 4.0.the second one has windows xp sp2 on it. when i restarted it booted in windows even if i made sure that the boot loader be installed on the master hhd which is the first hdd anyway.I put a windows cd in and restarted the machine and didn't boot from the cd by pressing a key.It now showed the grub bootloader.What does that mean?I mean is the grub installed or not if it is where then? i don't know why i alsways miss the grub stuff.

i was thinking that if i map the hdd with map(hd0) (hd1) and map(hd1) (hd0) in the /boot/grub/menu.lst will change something but i want to ask and understand first.
i'm also confused about grub.conf and menu.lst wich one?

With the kde live cd text labels are small and all the dialogs box and button are big.i mean really big.i thought if from the cd that's why i installed from the dvd.It was a pain .Icos, label , dialogs, button are all big.I can't even see the whole window.some time the rest of the dialog box are not showing and i have to guess where ok button is where Next button is.I managed to install fedora 10 like that because i'm a bit familiar with the installation.After installation i tried to change the screen resolution i saw only 600x350 and 600X400 while in windows i use 1024×768 and because of this issues with linux i put it to 1280×1024 even though a have a 17 inches monitor.it wasn't like that with my fedora 5 or with the debian etch 4.0 What to do?

thanks for reading this post

[yancek]

I'm not really sure that I understand the first part of your post. Are you saying you installed Fedora on the first partition of the first drive and have xp on the second partition of the first drive? Did you install stage1 of Grub to the master boot record of that drive. If you installed Grub to the root partition it won't boot? Also, Fedora usually doesn't automatically create entries for windows partitions so you have to put entries in manually. The file you look for should be menu.lst as I believe the grub.conf is just a link, should have a small arrow on the icon if it is a link. You should use the Fedora CD and open a terminal and as root type command: fdisk -l, that will get your partition information. Post it here.

[Highjo]

hello sorry for the late response.I was out of town the whole weekend.
here is the information you ask for:

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf65a4dc5

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1912 15358108+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 1913 2548 5108670 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 2550 9729 57673350 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 2550 5099 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 5100 7649 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 7650 9729 16707568+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xfdf82c80

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 3844 30876898+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sdb2 3845 4865 8201182+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 3845 4865 8201151 b W95 FAT32

Disk /dev/sdc: 4063 MB, 4063232000 bytes
5 heads, 32 sectors/track, 49600 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 160 * 512 = 81920 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

and the menu.lst is :

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You do not have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /, eg.
# root (hd0,0)
# kernel /boot/vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/sda1
# initrd /boot/initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/sda
default=0
timeout=15
splashimage=(hd0,0)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
#hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686 ro root=UUID=c799b56c-43aa-417b-9870-5ef0fb6f2d16 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686.img
title Windows Xp Pro
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
map(hd0) (hd1)
map(hd1) (hd0)

i tried something the last time when i get home.I disconnected the second disk ie the windows one and switch on the pc and the grub started working.after i connected the second disk back the grub is still working but it failed to boot into windows xp.I think the menu list is correct so why isn't booting into window?thanks for your time.

[yancek]

Your entry for xp in the menu.lst looks correct. When you say xp doesn't boot, what exactly happens? Do you get any error message? If so, what is it?

[Highjo]

It doesn't show any error.It show a black screen and a dash blinking as a cursor.thanks

[yancek]

You might try changing your xp entry by putting the "chainloader +1" after the map commands. Not sure that will help? Log in as root, go to the grub prompt and enter commands: geometry (hd0), and geometry (hd1), post output.

[Highjo]

thanks will try it and will post the output.Have a gud day

[devils casper]

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
map(hd0) (hd1)
map(hd1) (hd0)

chainloader +1 line must appear after mapping code and there should be a proper spacing in map lines.

rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

[Highjo]

Hi devils casper! Since you are part of this thread can you explain something for me?
First based on one of my previous post you suggested i installed the grub on the first disk which has linux on its first partition.I did it but i couldn't boot in linux but somehow grub is installed because it shows the menu list if i have windows xp cd in the cd room drive as explained in this thread.why?

after that somebody explained that even windows xp is installed on the second drive ,it write things on the first drive.I 'll like to understand this stuff to sort myself out the next time.it there is a ressource explainint that please give me the link.Thanks

[coopstah13]

you have to make sure in the BIOS it is set to boot from cdrom before hard disk