FC 3 - Grub hangs on stage 2

[Robert K. Christner]

Saad Liaquat Kiani wrote:
> Hi
> Just installed Fedora Core 3. Installs fine. Pre-installed windows Xp
> which means the system is now dual boot. Reboot the system and I am
> greeted with a hung up Grub on 2nd stage. its not liek grub is showing
> hte string of 'chainloader adn rootnonverify' likein some earlier
> cases listed here on the list .. rather its just 'Grub loading stage
> 2' and thats all. No change in screen. I can neither boot into windows
> nor FC3.
> I will appreciate any help I can get on this one.
> Saadi
> 
> ----------------------------- System specs -----
> HP nx 9000 laptop, 2.4 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 40GB Hitachi hard disk,

I had the exact same problem on my thinkpad t40.  The way I had my
disk partioned (worked fine in FC1 and FC2), was with the NTFS
partition first, then an ext3 partition (/) 2nd and a swap partition
3rd.  I tried this configuration with all three being primary
partitions and also with the last two being logical partitions.  Same
result for both.  I then tried to use the rescue disk and reinstall
grub.  This worked as expected, but I was greeted upon reboot with
"Grub loading stage 1.5" and still hanging.

I finally got it to work by moving my NTFS partition to the latter
part of the disk and creating two logical partitions (1 ext3, and 1
swap) at the beginning of the hard disk.  I then reinstalled FC3.  In
all cases I had to use the manual disk druid way of creating/editing
partitions (e.g. setting mount points, etc.), because the automatic
partitioning option would never work even if I had the partitions
setup already with Partition Magic.

One thing to note here is that now my disk looks like this...

-----------------------

[rob at maxwell ~]$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 36.8 GB, 36883129344 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4764 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *        1528        4764    24471688+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2               1        1375    10394968+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3            1376        1527     1149120   82  Linux swap

Partition table entries are not in disk order

-----------------------

The problem here is that the partition table isn't in order because
/dev/hda1 is actually the last partition on the disk.  This can cause
problems if a utility (like IBMs Rapid Restore Rescue and Recovery
software) decides to reorder the partition table.  The fix for this
(if it happens) is to use the FC3 rescue CD and change your fstab to
match the new order.  This will probably be /dev/hda1 for /, and
/dev/hda2 for swap, and /dev/hda3 for your windows partition.  You
will also have to use the Windows recovery console and run the command
"bootcfg /rebuild" to fix your boot.ini file, so that Windows is aware
of the change.

I'm sure there is a utility out there that can reorder your partition
table so it is correct, that way you don't have to just wait for it to
happen.

I hope this helps,
Rob