Fedora and Partition Magic

[Gerhard Magnus]

On Thu, 2004-12-02 at 15:30, Scott wrote:

> > Gerhard Magnus wrote:
> >
> >> I'm trying to set up a dual booting system with Windows XP and Fedora 3
> >> using Partition/Boot Magic 8. My system has two hard drives with
> >> Windows XP installed on drive 1. Following the Partion Magic
> >> instructions, I created a small FAT partition on drive 1 for the Boot
> >> Magic files (which can't be installed on a NTFS partition). I used
> >> Partition Magic to create Linux ext3 and swap partitions on drive 2. I
> >> then installed Fedora 3 on drive 2, apparently successfully since I got
> >> to the splash screen that said so and told me to reboot.
> >>
> >> When I installed Fedora 3 without GRUB, the reboot hung on the message
> >> that the system was preparing to boot Fedora 3.
> >>
> >> When I installed Fedora 3 with GRUB (and including Windows XP as an
> >> option on the GRUB menu) I was able to reboot into Fedora successfully
> >> and complete the installation process. But then the Windows XP boot
> >> hung.
> >>
> >> I used the Boot Magic rescue disc to boot back to Windows XP where I
> >> reactivated Boot Magic and added Fedora as an OS to the Boot Magic
> >> menu. Now I can boot into Windows XP but the Fedora boot fails.
> >>
> >> Any hints as to how to hack through this? Are there special problems
> >> with having the bootable Fedora partition on the second drive? I'm not
> >> committed to using Boot Magic but it's worked fine for me in the past.
> >>
> > Why do you need Partition Magic? Fedora can do all the partitions 
> > during the installation process. I actually suggests a scheme that, as 
> > I learned too late, is pretty good. What we did and worked fine was:
> > First partition: WinXP
> > All the rest: done with the partition utility during the Fedora 
> > installation, and all worked fine.
> >
> PM is still good if you want more than two OS' (say Win XP, Win2k, FC3 
> or WinXP FC3, SuSE 9.2). Also you can use it's Boot Manager (Boot Magic) 
> vs using GRUB.
> 
> But in response to how you did it on yours, do you have Fedora 
> partitions on a separate drive or on the same drive (as windows)?
> 
I have the two Fedora partitions on the second drive.  I finally fixed
the problem by using the Advanced Boot Loader Configuration feature of
the Fedora installation and specifying the first sector of the boot
partition instead of the default Master Boot Record as the site for
installing the GRUB Boot Loader record.  Then I booted into Windows XP
and added Fedora to the Boot Magic menu.  Dual booting at last!

Like so much else I do with computers, this worked without my quite
understanding why....  Is this "boot partition" my Fedora partition?

Jerry