Fedora Core 4 and XP Grub problems

[snarkie]

Hi There

I am a Linux newbie. I have previously installed Suse 9.2 and Ubuntu with no problems whatsoever. However I am still evaluating distros and I wanted to try FC4.

My setup is as follows. I have 2 Hard drives. One has WinXP and I always install the linux distro on the 2nd Hard drive. All of the other installs worked perfectly. FC4 was an exception. During the install I indicated that GRUB should be installed on the MBR and that FC4 should be the default. The install seemed fine but when the computer rebooted, I received GRUB Error 22. Luckily I knew about WinXP FIXMBR to resolve that issue.

I restarted the install and made Windows XP the default. Now when I reboot the computer it goes straight into XP. I do not get prompted with the GRUB screen to choose which OS to boot to.

So that is my experience with FC4 so far. Like I said I am a total newbie so it is not obvious to me how to resolve this. I have tried Linux Rescue and editing the grub.conf file but I can't find it on the file system.

Seeing as every other distro handles GRUB installation perfectly, this problem is not inspiring me to keep trying FC4. Any ideas?

Thanks

[dylunio]

The problem is that you have overwritten GrUB on your Master Boot Record, with the windows bootloader. Thankfully nerderello has made a great tutorial on how to get grub back http://www.linuxforums.org/tutorials...ial-19999.html

dylunio

[drakebasher]

Now when I reboot the computer it goes straight into XP. I do not get prompted with the GRUB screen to choose which OS to boot to.

One of the differences from Fedora Core 1 to FC3 is that they made the Grub boot list "hidden" by default. That may be your problem. If you see any non-Windows screen after the usual BIOS boot routine, press any key to see the OS listing.

If that is the problem, you can change the default behavior by editing your /boot/grub/grub.conf file by adding a '#' character at the beginning of the line that says "hiddenmenu" or something similar to that.

[snarkie]

I will check out the tutorial and let you know what happens. By the way, last night I reinstalled Ubuntu and it worked perfectly. Then I reinstalled FC4. Same problem. Grub error 22.

Also, during install I always say "let Linux use the entire hard disk". I do not specify anything for swap etc I just use whatever the defaults are.

Thanks