General :: PC Won't Boot After New Fedora/Win XP Dual Boot Install?
Sep 7, 2009
I have a PC with three HD's. My primary hard drive has a single partition and contains Win XP SP3. I have a second hard drive which I use to store junk (pictures, movies, etc). The third, 60GB HD, I just put into my PC and I wanted to install Fedora 11 onto it. I want to have a dual boot system with WinXP being the default boot. I downloaded the latest build of Fedora 11, created a LiveCD out of it and I tried to install the OS onto this third new hard drive. I installed the OS, I told it to use the entire third HD and to have a dual boot setup and make the WinXP OS be the default boot. The installation seemed to go without any problems. However, after restarting the PC, the PC stops booting right after the DELL screen. It gives me a cursor and that's it. It just sits there. I have tried redoing the install about 4 different times now and no matter how I change the different installation options, I get the same result. Now I can't even boot into XP even after I disconnect the third drive. I am guessing that the dual boot got screwed up; I just don't know how to fix it and more importantly, how to install Fedora, dual boot.
i installed windows 7 successfully. When I installed it,I created 40 gb of unallocated space in the hard disk for the Fedora installation. However, whenever i start the partition editor during the Fedora installation, it says that there is no free space in your hardware, even though it shows 40gb space in the disk partition table.
I am planing to install fedora 13 on my dual boot (windows-7 + fedora) laptop. Previously some one helped me installing fedora on my laptop. Below let me mention the my file system architecture as the question is related to it. It's a 320 GB hard drive.
1. First 250 MB primary partition (used to be for /boot, which is currently unallocated, because in last installation I chose fedora to install automatically).
2. Next 120 GB windows primary partition.
3. Next 200 GB Logical partition
a. First 125 GB for windows backup
b. rest for Linux (500 MB + 60 GB).
As Linux was installed later thus it wrote the boot partition itself. I want the boot partition in the first 250 MB partition (reason, to be safe, I don't want to mess up with the master boot record while playing with Linux), also need to install fedora 13. The architecture I want is following:
1. first 250 MB: /boot
2. Next 120 GB: Windows
3. Logical:
a. First 125 GB: Windows backup.
b. Next 4 GB: /swap
c. Rest: /root -- I want to install Fedora here
So, what I plan to do is to whip out all the current Linux file systems and insert fedora dvd and install according to my criteria!
Now my questions are:
1. since currently Linux has the master boot record, will it cause any problem for the machine to boot up from installation dvd, if I whip off all the current Linux partitions? (Or in other words, does installation/ live-CD need a master boot record to boot? -- I am guessing once I reinstall Linux, booting is not a problem).
2. Once Linux is whipped off, can windows boot up automatically?
3. Is there any worry of messing up windows, specially its boot sector(off course I will take precaution not touching windows partitions!)
After asking on both this forum and the Fedora forum, I felt it was safe enough to install a copy of Fedora on my working-well openSUSE drive. I have a 1 TB drive, partitioned as follows:
I did an install of Fedora 13, was VERY careful to set up the installer to put it's files in the partitions I wanted, although I did let it mark the partition as active, feeling it may have to boot during the installation process.
I had grub installed in the root of the partition rather than the MBR for both systems.
When Fedora finished installing, I rebooted the system only to find that it wouldn't. I got the dreaded "No Boot Device" message.
So, I started the 5 hour process of booting with the parted magic disk, booting with a Gentoo live disk (only one around), monkeying with the install parts of the openSUSE and Fedora disks, swapping drives to Windows to download openSUSE Live CDs (yes, both) and searching the forums and various other web sites for some poor bloke who did the same stupid whatever it was I did, and finally, as I was using fdisk on the Gnome Live CD, I noticed the warning message stating that fdisk would not work on a drive that was partitioned with the GPD format.
Notice that I have 5 partitions? That is not a typo on my part, I used the GPD format when I set it up so I could do what I did without using "imitation" partitions.
When I used parted (the command line editor on the Gnome Live CD) to change the active partition, everything started working again! Well, at least I can boot the openSUSE system, the most important thing.
It is my suspicion that the Fedora install uses fdisk to do it's work, and fdisk just mucks up a GPD formatted disk. Not the information, just the part of the drive that holds the partition table. Perhaps just the flags section. I don't know enough to say with any certainty.
I didn't change the drives parameters during the installation of Fedora, so I don't know of it even offers the GPD partitioning option. If not, I can understand how this sort of thing could happen.
Still....So now all I have to do is make the grub menu, the one installed with openSUSE, boot the Fedora installation on the next partition. Seems simple enough.
it started with rooting my Motorola Droid. I got quite interested in the whole rooting/linux "world". The only problem is, my hands move A LOT faster than my brain does. I'm an "educated novice" at best when it comes to all of this and still learning slowly, but surely. I followed an online tutorial and before I realized quite what i'd done, I had dual installed Ubuntu linux 10.10 on my laptop. ISO'd this, partitioned that and realized....i'm in way over my head. Then I started researching how to just go back in time and get my "safe" windows vista back until I'm ready to make the switch to linux and just ended up getting more confused.
How do I actually BOOT into Windows on a dual boot computer that I apparently just created? How, if need be, do I undo everything I just did in the past few hours and careless tinkering? If I decide to stay with Linux, how do I get my damn wireless router to recognize?
I turn back to openSUSE and install it in my machine (win7 installed first),but i can't boot from win7. openSUSE doesn't boot from win7 (like ubuntu) and i can't see ntfs win7 partition from openSUSE. Why openSUSE is so complicated about dual booting
I'm trying to dual-boot Windows 7 with openSuSE 11.4, i was told that i should install SuSE after windows 7 as it takes care of the boot-loader and automatically detects my windows installation and not vice-versa, But that is not true in my case.
So i had 2 hard disks one had windows 7 installed and one was empty so i decided that i should get openSuSE 11.4 on the empty hard disk and dual-boot it with windows 7 (that i already had installed). Downloaded the DVD, put it on a USB and installed SuSE on the other hard disk normally, it detected my windows installation on my main hard disk but i didn't touch that, only formatted my other hard disk to ext4
After the installation it booted automatically into SuSE, but now every time on a fresh restart the system boots automatically into windows. Methods i have already tried to resolve this and it didn't work:
1. Booted from the DVD and selected an "Upgrade" not "New Installation" so i could boot again into my SuSE installation which did work, checked my "Boot Loader" options from YaST and checked the "Boot from MBR" option instead of the "Boot from root partition" option, That Did NOT work.
2. Used the same method to Boot into SuSE with the "Upgrade" Option opened up the terminal and tried to install grub manually again using this link
I have recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a Compaq Presario V3000.
To prepare the install, I freed about 15 GB of space, booted from an USB. I chose "use largest continous free space" when it got to that point and then proceeded with the rest.
Now when I choose vista it will not load properly, here's what happens:
1.Windows says loading windows files.
2.After a while, I have to choose a language.
3.Windows looks for operating systems to repair.
If I choose not to, it will take me to a menu where I can choose to fix boot problems, command line, etc...
Linux is running very well, vista is the problem here, I have a recovery disk*, but I wanted to ask you guys if that is the correct move. I really need to keep windows to run some windows only apps.
*This disk was burnt on another computer, an HP from a friend who has the same vista edition. Will this work? This computer's burner is broken..
This is actually something for my gf, she has an account on my computer(only ubuntu on it) and uses it often (Mendley, Zotero, and sciency things in general). She loved it and asked me to install a dual boot with her win system. She use SPSS for whatever kind of statistical analysis it does and she likes ms office better then open office, and I would like to leave her with the choice....
I am trying to install Ubuntu on a machine that already has Windows 7 on one partition. Obviously I intend to install it on the other free partition. So I downloaded the iso burnt it onto the disk and pop in the disk and the boot the machine. The installation screen comes up I selected the first option (Try Ubuntu without installation), I just see a prompt after a few seconds and then the screen goes blank and nothing happens. Unable to detect a signal, The monitor goes into standby. The same thing happens if I use "install Ubuntu" option as well. I downloaded minimal install version Ubuntu and tried to install with that. since its old school installation, the installation completed without any errors, but when I restart the grub come up and when I select to boot into Ubuntu, I see the same behavior i.e. the screen goes blank and never boots to anything. This is a machine on which I was using 10.4 until yesterday.
I'm having a frustrating time trying to install Ubuntu as a dual boot with Windows 7 on a new Acer Aspire 5750.The initial install proceeded without incident until an error along the lines of "Cannot install GRUB to /dev/sda".I continued without installing GRUB, and attempted to install GRUB from the live CD:Code:sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mntsudo grub-setup -d /mnt/boot/grub /dev/sdaThis installed GRUB, but only linking to my Windows 7 partition (sda2).
I currently have XP installed on a NetBook (Samsung NC10), and would like to run Fedora on it. I'm currently looking at putting Fedora onto a flash memory card to test it works OK on the hardware, before installing it to the hard disk. The problem I've got is that the boot sector is occupied by WDE software (TrueCrypt). Will this pose a problem for dual-booting XP with Fedora, or will GRUB move the boot loader in the usual way?
I am having dual boot system(windows 7 and Fedora 12).When i switch on my system.It show the the timer 3 sec in order to get boot selection window(means window which asks that what to start fedora 12 or windows 7).I want to increase this time from 3 to 10 sec.
I am a major noob to FC12. I need to install Windows 7 Pro and FC12 dual boot. I first used the windows CD to create 1 250 Gig partition on my 500 Gig HD. Of course windows created the 100 MB system partition. I left the rest unpartitioned. Windows installed okay. I then booted to the KDE FC12 Live CD and installed FC12. I specified to use the Free Space remaining on the HD. The installation finished but now only boots into FC12 and does not prompt me for the OS I want to boot.
I downloaded Fedora 15 Live and Fedora 14 Live to try to see where Linux is for music and broadcast audio on a laptop. It turns out I have to use 14. 14 and 15 both sort of work as live out of the box, although why they ship with the common Broadcom wifi driver missing and the touchpad tap disabled beats me. I also never found the magic button to close down 15. There must be one, but blow me I couldn't find it. Then I tried to follow the instructions at [URL] which mostly seemed to work. I need to keep Win 7 as this is the 32-bit test machine. I used EasyBCD v2.1 rather than the older version the guide is written for.
Booting into Win7 at first worked, then a boot into Linux stopped at a line that said something about a kernel thread helper Then Win 7 blue screened on boot, although it would boot to Safe Mode. Removed Veriface from the Lenovo laptop and it would boot Win 7. Tried setting Drive in EasyBCD to "Boot" rather than "C:" for Fedora. Now booting Fedora gave a Windows missing file message and croaked. Repairing startup with the Win 7 boot CD cured Win 7. Repeated the loop with the same failures. Re-partitioned and re-installed Fedora and just the same - a screen of text that stops. I can now boot to Windows and need help to sort out the Linux boot. How do I start to investigate the screen of text saying things like "__bad_area_nosemaphore" ?
I just set up a dual boot on a system with fedora 12 and XP. XP in on one hard drive (sda) and Fedora on a second hard drive (sdb).
I installed grub on the Fedora disk so as to not touch the windows disk at all.
Prior to installation, in the bios, I set the Fedora disk (sdb) first in the boot sequence, and then XP (sda) so that the grub loader would boot up by default. (If I set the windows drive first then the system bypasses grub and loads straight into windows.)
My system can now boot up into Fedora fine, but if I select windows from the grub loader menu I just get a blinking cursor - windows will not boot.What do I have to do so that grub can boot into XP?
It's been a while since I last installed a Linux distro on a machine that already houses another OS. I want to install OpenSuse (11.2) on a spare external drive that I have which will be connected to my PC through USB. The PC however, houses four other drives: one drive that has WinXP installed on it (NTFS) which is my normal boot drive, and three data drives - all NTFS.
Like I said, I want to install OpenSuse on the external drive through a network install. I don't want to end up with a boot menu where I can choose between OpenSuse and XP, I simply want to boot from the XP drive by default and boot from the USB drive when I tell my system to do so (I can call up a boot menu where I can tell my PC from which drive to boot).
Now I have done this many times - albeit too long ago to remember how I did it. I do remember however that last time I tried to do it, it installed a boot menu on my XP boot drive, and I had a hell of a time removing it. What do I need to look out for to prevent this from happening? How do I make sure nothing is changed on the other four drives? (The safest way would be to simply disconnect the other four drives from my system and install OpenSuse on the USB drive of course
I want to dual boot kubuntu. I am a linux noob so have basically no experience with linux except what i have done of the live cd. My problem is that when I get to the part of the installer relating to partitions. It wont allow me to select the free space I have shrunk off my windows/data partition. it calls the space unusable and will not allow me to proceed when it is selected. Shouldn't the installer turn the free space into a partition for kubuntu to install to? The installer also show a bar wich marks off the partitions and how much each one takes up it does recongnize that there is free space because it tells me that I have 25 gb free.
I'm stuck with installing Fedora Core I have 2 hard drives both 80Gb I want to install a fresh copy on one of the drives to do a dual boot I have vista on the main hard drive this is where I am at Installation requires partitioning of your hard drive by default, a partitioning layout is chosen which is reasonable for most users. You can either choose to use this or create your owe. Select the drive to use for this installation?
I have been searching around and found lots of details of how to fix a dual boot situation gone wrong but I have not run across a guide or steps on how to install Windows & FC12 the correct way.I have to reinstall my computer any way for other reasons so I am going to reinstall with either XP or Win7 (leaning towards 7) and Fedora 12. I can dedicate a drive to each OS no problem and I can imagine how I would install each on it's own drive, but not quite sure what to use as a boot manager?
I'm using Fedora 15 and i want to install Ubunto 11.04 using live usb and then the two linux systems to be on my computer.note:first fedora 15 is to be installed
I am having 320G of HDD , on the HD i m having 40G free space when i m trying to install rhel5.4 in the free part it is showing me this error
Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions: Partitioning failed: Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions.Not enough space left to create partition for /boot.
I have just install both fedora 12 and slackware 13 on my laptop I did not install lilo because fedora uses grub I am able to use slackware by using the the DVD and booting from the command prompt I have attached my grub .conf file also when i boot from cd the command is as follows
The problem is this: I have a 320gb HDD splitted in 4 partitions. When I first installed Windows XP I formatted the HDD in 3 (Windows system partition, Media partition and another one I left for Linux). However Linux requires another partition for swap. Everything was just fine. One day Windows stopped working and I tried re-installing it. After the system was ready to start, Windows failed to boot with "NTLDR is missing" message. I tried to recover the Master boot record, even replaced NTLDR manually - nothing worked. I read that in order a HDD to be partitioned in more than 3 parts the so called "extended" partitions must be created. I think this may cause the problem but I don't want to wipe out everything (I have more than 100 GB of books most of which are not available anymore in the same locations I have downloaded them)
this is my first thread. Just installed Desktop Kubuntu Natty 11.04 x86_64 and have been amazed by its possibilities. I would like though to install a second OS which is free-ware and unlike Kubuntu but as powerful and userfriendly. Would anyone recommend the followinf?
So I want to install the original version of Fedora 15 and make it dual boot with my Windows 7. Problem here is that I don't have a cd/rom. and the iso file didn't have a .exe thingy.....
so now what? Also this is my partitions> http://img94.imageshack.us/img94/9853/unledtlh.jpg
I tried a number of times to install dual boot with Win2k. I keep getting errors at the stage of setting up the partition for the install. When I try to choose ext4 it says Fedora cannot be installed on a bootable drive, fix the problem. I don't see how to fix it...it does not say what to do or change.
I have had other linux installed in the same partition without a problem. What gives?
150GB drive for both OS's Separate drive for data, not involved in the install.
| 72GB NTFS Win2K | 76 GB free for ext3 and swap |
I've got Fedora 11 working fine on an HP Mini 2140 netbook. (Wireless works after enabling the rpmfusion repo and installing the broadcom-wl driver.) Now I want to try to put Moblin 2.0 on the netbook as a dual boot.
Unfortunately the Moblin installer (Anaconda? Looks like it.) reports that there's no free space on the / volume. It looks like what's going on is that Fedora 11 created two partitions: /boot and /; and the / partition is LVM and uses all the rest of the available space on the hard drive.
I want to continue using Fedora 11's bootloader for any dual boot. So, basic question #1: Is the solution to create another partition for the Moblin install, or to resize the existing / LV in the existing LV group, and then create another LV for the Moblin install? In other words, can I install another OS on a second LV in the same LVG?
I cannot boot into the Windows 7 partition, which I guess is /dev/sda1. I have Slackware installed on /dev/sda2 which boots fine, my /etc/lilo.conf looks like
