FC4 Sata Boot Problems

[Mike McCarty]

Whemberton wrote:

>My system is an AMD Athlon 64, Motherboard MSI Platinum, with 3 HD...
>firts HD is IDE 80Gb, totally dedicated for FC instalation...
>Second and third ones are SATA drives, 120Gb each, NTFS, dedicated for
>Windows XP professional.
>Actually systems boots first windows, directely through 2nd HD (windows SATA).
>I've tried to confire lilo or grub (MBR on 1sr IDE HD) to dual boot
>linux or windows... linux boot is running properly, but boot windows
>by lilo/grub... no way... when I try to do it, system freezes... the
>only way to change between systems is change HD boot priority on bios
>(nothing practical... isn't??)...
>Anyone has any idea what's going on??
>
>Thanks....
>
>  
>
Depends on which flavor of Windows you are trying to boot.

I have a multiboot Windows XP and Linux Fedora Core 2 machine
I'm using right now, using a single disc with multiple partitions
on it. I can boot either Windows XP or any of several FC2 releases.

The trick is to use the Windows XP (really NT) boot manager to manage
the boot for you.

I use GRUB. This procedure may work for you, if you use GRUB.
These instructions presume that you are fairly familiar with
both GRUB and Windows XP. Oh, and Linux.

I  *S*T*R*O*N*G*L*Y* recommend you to make backups of all your
discs before proceeding with this procedure. Be sure you can
recover from complete disaster!

    1. Boot to Linux in whatever way you currently do.
    2. Install GRUB on your /boot device using the GRUB emulation mode,
       NOT into the MBR, but the first sector on the volume.
    3. Use dd to copy the first sector of the /boot volume to a DOS
       floppy disc file, using any name you like. I used LINUX.BIN
    4. Reboot to Windows XP.
    5. Copy your boot image to C:\LINUX.BIN (substitute your file name)
    6. Open System_Properties->Advanced->Startup&Recovery->Settings->Edit
    7. Add this line
          C:\LINUX.BIN="Linux"
    8. Edit the line with the timeout=0 and set it to timeout=30 or
       however long you want to wait. Otherwise, it'll just default
       to XP immediately, and you won't get a chance to boot Linux.
    9. Exit from the edit and close all windows.

Shut down and reboot to test. You should see an option to boot Linux.

You might want to make a GRUB boot floppy and play around with
booting Linux off of it first, to make sure that you don't lose
the ability to boot Linux after step 2. Do step 2 only after
you feel comfortable booting from floppy. I also suggest you make
a boot floppy for NT and make sure you can handle that.

I'm not familiar enough with LILO to give you advice with it, but
I presume that a similar sequence would work with it.

I disclaim any responsibility for anything you do to your machine.
You are solely responsible for making the decisions concerning
what if any of the above is applicable to your situation.

What I described is what worked for me.

YMMV

Another technique, which I have not used, is to use a DOS command prompt
boot, followed by loadlin (I think that is the command). Someone else
may have some comments to make on that.

Mike

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