<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> <div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-western"> My, my, where to start. It's been, as the Chinese might say, interesting. To summarize, I started with a Win2k/Win98 dual boot system, the Win2k on a SCSI drive, Win98 on IDE primary master, CD/DVD primary slave, a data drive on secondary master, and added a new drive as secondary master to use fo Linux. Trying the Core 3 CD's, anaconda crashed on assert failures trying to detect drive geometry and partitions. The Core 2 complained, but came up to DiskDruid, and I set up 20G /, 12G /home, 4G swap and installed it. I somewhat innocently let it put GRUB over top of the W2k boot loader on /hda, and after install, could not boot W2k/98 anymore. At this point I solicited advice here and received much cheerful and willing assistance, mainly these two (below).... First, I tried restoring the W2k bootloader, successfully, on /hda, but could no longer get to Linux. So I did the dd and saved the first block, then went looking for BOOT.INI on the W2k system. Hmmm, there wasn't one. So I started looking on the net for info on where it might be, and found some pointers to Micro$oft support pages about it, which mentioned that 'ntldr' uses BOOT.INI to load NT(W2k), and went looking for ntldr, finding it in \WINNT\ServicePackFiles\i386, and dropped the file there and created a BOOT.INI with the incantation noted below. Nope, that didn't do it. Rummaging around, I discovered I have a PartitionMagic 6.0 CD I had never used, and thought maybe this might help. For starters, it noticed partition table irregularities on the Windows drives, and helpfully offered to fix them. That at least got the Core 3 install to stop crashing while examining drives. <soapbox> Just as an aside, my own opinion is that assert() has no place in released code, as useful as it may be on occasion in development. ESPECIALLY in code looking at read/write storage that could be in any state. Speaking as a programmer, I take it as a given that there are NO impossible conditions. It's just defensive programming. If quantum theory can assign a nonzero probability to a black hole materializing over my CPU, making assumptions about the state of a disk is glibly optimistic, I think. </soapbox> Anyway, PartitionMagic comes with BootMagic, their own boot loader. So I tried that, to no avail. I should mention here that the first sector of the drive (what dd captured) is apprently the drive geometry and partition table, so I'm thinking this probably wouldn't work anyway. I found this out the hard way by dropping it onto the first sector of my /hdd (Linux drive), and the system then thought it was an 8GB FAT32 drive and became horribly confused. I tried reconstructing my original partition table, without success. Core 3's anaconda went back to crash-n-burn, so I tried to see what PartitionMagic could do with it. It refused to touch the Linux drive, totally corrupted as it was. The Win2k drive manager was willing to delete the corrupt partition so I tried that. Sadly, I forgot that help from Redmond frequently has a high price, as I discovered it appears to have blown away the firmware on the CD/DVD on the secondary IDE channel that the Linux drive is on. Oopsie. Okay, it was a Samsung, and I wasn't all that happy with it anyway. Went down and got a new Plextor after I got an RMA for the Samsung. Put everything back together, Core 3 install came up ok, and installed Core 3. Updated to 2.6.10-1.741_FC3, and now trying to decide if Thunderbird needs to get blown away, but that's another story. THIS time, however, I had it put GRUB on the Linux boot drive (/hdd) instead of the master boot disk. Now at boot, the BootMagic comes up, offers Windows and Linux, and both actually work. Would this work with the normal W2k bootloader? I don't know, and since it works ok like this, I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader. :+) Probably not, since the W2k bootloader that comes up doesn't show anything but Win98 and Win2k for options. I can't figure out where they're storing this info, there doesn't seem to be BOOT.INI, it's not in the registry, duh. The only file in the whole system with the string "/fastdetect" is ntldr. Ron; <blockquote type="cite"> Maxim Eremeev wrote: Ron Watson wrote: <blockquote type="cite">Thanks, will make a recovery disk, test it, try to get w2k back up, get linux back up. As for ntfs support... went to /boot/config-2.6.10-1.9_FC2 and it says auto generated... auto generated by what? Noticed it does not set ntfs support, e.g. # CONFIG_NTFS_FS is not set so is it "safe" to add CONFIG_NTFS_FS=y to the config file, will it just get overwritten at next boot, or what? Ron; </blockquote> Actually, if you have your W2K installation CD you do not need to make any additional recovery disk - just boot from the CD and through several screens choose the recovery console (you have to remember the admin password, though). As for configuring the boot loader for the multiple boot I would suggest another decision (wasn't discussed, as far as I remember): 1. Now, as I can understand, you can boot just into Fedora and you have its boot loader installed onto hda. So boot it and in the terminal type something like: dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 of=/bootsect.lnx Note that I put hda here as you mentioned that BL was installed there. Move the file bootsect.lnx onto diskette. 2. Boot from W2K CD and do all this funny stuff with fixboot fixmbr 3. Now you should be able to load your W2K installation. Go there and find where the file boot.ini is located. Copy the bootsect.lnx to the same location. Normally it's just C:\, but as you have Win98 it could be E:\, D:\ or whatever where your W2K resides. Add the following line to boot.ini: %path to bootsect.lnx%="Fedora" (it could be D:\bootsect.lnx="Fedora" for example) 4. Restart and choose Fedora from the boot menu - see whether it does the trick. It worked for me when I used FC1 on a dual boot machine - haven't tried it since that time, though, as I quitted all this multiple boot stuff. Any way you won't risk anything: in the worst case you'll just have to do what you'd do without those manipulations - boot from Fedora rescue disc and try to figure out how to make all your systems bootable. In the best case you will get the so much desired multiple boot system right away. Good luck (send me a feedback, if possible, as I wonder if this trick still can be useful :) ) Maxim. </blockquote> Jonathan Berry wrote: <blockquote cite="mid8767947e05012914146e562024@mail.gmail.com" type="cite"> <pre wrap=""> Sure you can change it, but it won't do anything. You can either change it and then recompile your kernel or you can go the easy route and go to the great <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/">http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/</a> website and download the kernel module rpm and install it. Then you can mount your NTFS drive. You may not have to restore the Win2k boot loader to get things fixed. You probably just need to configure GRUB to chainload Windows. If you installed GRUB to the MBR of the main disk, this is what you want. You can then tell GRUB about the Windows installs and it can get them booting too. The installer should have done something like this for you. Do you have an "Other" boot option? When the GRUB screen comes up, press a key and you should see a list of systems to boot. I suggest you look around in the archives and on Google for stuff about dual booting so that you can understand what you want to do. If you get stuck with something, then shoot another email at the list. Jonathan </pre> </blockquote> </div> <pre class="moz-signature" cols="255">-- === Ron Watson === <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:rw@compukitty.com">rw@compukitty.com</a> === Nisi potestatam dabis, non habebunt. </pre> </body> </html>