Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 126113
Bad: grub screen doesnot appear upon reboot, boots directly into Windows XP
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:10:44 EST
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1) Description of problem: I partitioned harddisk to get 15GB ext3 primary partition and 500 MB SWAP and installed(graphical) fedora 2 on it. I want a dual boot cofiguration and my comp already has Windows XP on it. I got a warning "partition alignment not proper, some boot loaders might have problems(fixable), safe to ignore". Secondly, what option should i use for boot loader MBR or first section. I tried both. MBR was working first day, but later on I could not see a grub screen to choose between linux and XP and comp was straight booting into XP. First section is not working at all and comp is booting directly in XP. Third problem: I tried to upgrade the linux after installing it and was trying to change boot loader settings, but in the very end of upgrading process, I got a warning "Kernel is not installed, boot loader configurations will not be changed ". I am relatively new to linux. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Didn't try Additional info:
Installing to the boot partition will only work if the partition is then active or you are using a secondary boot loader such as Boot Magic. If installing into the MBR worked at first but then stopped working, it sounds like XP overwrote it when you booted into it.
I reinstalled FC2 again yesterday and used MBR. It is working good so far and I think you are right, XP overwrote MBR when I tried system restore feature in XP. Can you suggest something to prevent this. I couldnot get your first line (am relatively new to linux). I created the partition using Windows XP tools, but deleted it and formated with Disk Druid. Is that causing the problem. And what can I do about the error I get when I try to upgrade the boot loader. Thx
Unfortunately, that's one of the points that XP's "system restore" does -- there's not much of a way around it other than "don't use it". And the upgrade thing is due to the fact that we can only generate a boot loader config if we install the kernel and thus can figure out what kernels should be in the boot loader config.