Unofficial Fedora FAQ Update: 31 May 2004

[xyzzy at hotpop.com]

On Tuesday 01 June 2004 04:16, Max K-A wrote:

> 	+ Solution for the windows dual-boot problem

This would probably work if you already nuked your Windows disk partition 
table.

What I did was, after reading about all the problems with this and BEFORE I 
attempted any sort of install with FC2 since I had gotten the "partition 
table alignment" message which caused me to abort immediately, was that I 
booted up with a Knoppix 3.4 CD (using the Debian 2.6 kernel, but you can use 
the 2.4 kernel for this step) to get a root prompt, did 
# cat /proc/ide/hda/geometry

... (your Windows disk might be a different hard disk!) then wrote down what 
it said for the "logical" geometry, e.g.:
physical     16383/16/63
logical      7752/240/63

Then, I booted up the Fedora install disk into the install with:
linux hda=7752,250,63
(NOT the numbers I used, btw - YMMV)

... and it worked like a charm, installing the boot loader to the MBR so that 
GRUB gets control at the beginning.  Note that to be able to finally boot, 
each time the partition table is changed, the BIOS bootsector virus 
protection has to be disabled, but only once.  The next boot, you can 
re-enable it.

Whoever is the FAQ maintainer might want to consider putting this solution in, 
also... this preventitive solution is preferable to the solution outlined in 
the FAQ that works if you are recovering from an already nuked partition 
table.

HTH