Dual-Boot

[YourDoom123]

I'm trying to do a dual-boot with windows xp and fedora. i am only using one 80 gig pata drive. Windows is already installed on the system and it uses an ntfs file system. when i installed fedora on the first sector of the boot disk, i couldn't even launch fedora. i know im supposed to get into grub.conf and windows there but don't i need to be in fedora first?

[Prometheus]

Is the whole disc NTFS? If it is, you need to make a partition that is blank to install Fedora. Fedora will recognize NTFS, but it cant write to it. It will create its own filesystem (ext 2 or 3) to run Fedora on. From there you can install fedora on the new partition and all should work (should being the operative word there) Good luck.

Prometheus

[greenleaf]

FC2 allow you to edit the grub when installing boot loader, don't skip over the screens too fast and you will be able to find it. You need to add grub entry for each multiple boot if there aren't already there.

[imdeemvp]

yourdoom123,

Prometheus, is right. you must create your free space for fc2 if you know how to use fdisk then create a partition of 30gb (min. of 10gb) if you have a large hd or you can use partition commander or partition magic

[booh]

I am assuming you have created the required linux partitions on your hd:
/
/boot
and a swap partition.

when installing FC2 it asked you if you wanted to install GRUB into the MBR or into the first sector of your /boot. You should have said MBR. (it works for me, I have a single 160GB SATA drive, with winXP installed first and then FC2). I made the same mistake as you and installed it on the first sector of the /boot.
You can fix this by booting from your installation disk of fedroa, and enter the rescue mode or whatever it is called and then reconfigure grub.
you can reconfigure it by running grub, and then typing something similar to the following:
root (hd0,5)
setup (hd0)

NOTE: i said similar, not exactly that!! you need to find out what is your /boot device and change it accordingly (assuming your configuration is similar to mine it should be the same, but I don't know how you created your partitions). hd0 means which physical drive and 5 means which partition you want to use for your boot device.
setup (hd0) installes grub into the MBR of the hd.
you can find more information about configuring grub from the different HOWTOs and the man pages.

booh.

[imdeemvp]

or just use cd #1 and get to the part that says upgrade and click on foward and just reinstall the grub in the MBR it will take less than 5 mins...

[booh]

@imdeemvp
yours is a better solution.... :) :)

[LinuxHippy]

Use your FC2 boot floppy to get into Linux and get to a terminal as root:

grub-install /dev/hda

[imdeemvp]

@imdeemvp
yours is a better solution.... :) :)

and besides that its graphical mode....so much easier to do and understand....
;)