Problems dual-booting Fedora Core 3 and Windows XP Pro with GRUB

Jonathan Berry berryja at gmail.com
Sun Feb 13 20:17:51 UTC 2005


On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 08:06:11 -0000, Stephen Black <steve at sblack.org> wrote:
>  
> Thanks for the replies guys. 
>   
> I believe that I forced the reiserfs option at the beginning of the install.
> However, I am not sure about this. I have since reinstalled using a manual
> partitioning of /boot = ext2fs; / = ext2fs and a swap partition. All of
> these are on hdb. 

Sorry if you wanted to use reiserfs.  It shouldn't have mattered what
/ was especially since you have a seperate /boot partition.

> I did use grub-install /dev/hda to install grub to the MBR. 

There are a couple of manual methods that would be worth trying.  Such as:
# grub
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

If that doesn't work, then maybe something like:
(it might be good to "umount /boot" before this one)
# grub
grub> root (hd1,0)
grub> install /grub/stage1 d (hd0) /grub/stage2 p /grub/menu.lst

Also, be sure you check your device.map file is correct.  It should be
something like:
(fd0)     /dev/fd0
(hd0)     /dev/hda
(hd1)     /dev/hdb

> I had the same problem as before. (Error 17 during Stage 1.5). You don't get
> as far as a grub command line. You have to reboot with a floppy containing
> grub which boots to the command line. You can then boot either OS by the
> manual method I described in my earlier post. 
>   
> However, what is really strange is that I have installed grub to another
> floppy. This boots fine and presents me with a lovely Fedora splash image
> and menu containing both the options in my grub.conf file. I can then boot
> both Fedora and Windows XP from this menu.

Did you copy the grub.conf file to the floppy, or is it seeing it on the disk?

> Why though, does it work from floppy and not from my MBR? Obviously I don't
> want a floppy in the computer every time I boot. 

Hey, extra security ; ).  I believe the reason the floppy works and
from the MBR doesn't is that the floppy has everything it needs to
bring up a full GRUB shell.  The MBR holds only stage1 with a
reference to either a stage 1.5 or stage 2 if I read things right.  It
seems that something is wrong with this reference.

> Steve Black 

Jonathan




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