dual boot problems-bootmagic

[hanfamily at earthlink.net]

On Wed, 4 May 2005, Paul Howarth wrote:

> On Tue, 2005-05-03 at 18:35 -0500, hanfamily at earthlink.net wrote:
> > On Tue, 3 May 2005, Mauriat wrote:
> > 
> > > > I bought a new compaq computer with win xp partitioned the
> > > > drive installed fedora with grub to load. I had everything
> > > > working then I booted windows it goes into pc recovery and
> > > > overwrites the boot section so it only will boot windows.
> > > > Is there a way to get this to work?  If not is there a
> > > > way to make a boot cd to access the linux partition.
> > > 
> > > Just an idea:
> > > Try re-installing grub to your boot partition or root partition
> > > (wherever you boot) and then use the NT boot loader in XP to load
> > > linux. This way you are not re-writing the MBR.
> > > http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm 
> > > http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Linux+NT-Loader.html
> > > 
> > > Mauriat
> > > 
> > > 
> > I  checked these out but they seem to all require a floppy drive
> > which is missing on my computer. Partition Magic also has boot magic
> > has anyone had any luck using it to dual boot xp and fedora?
> 
> Using bootpart does not require a floppy disk. It is a way of setting up
> the Windows bootloader so that it can boot Linux. You will, however,
> need to install grub on the root or /boot partition of your Fedora
> installation. What does the partitioning of your disk look like? Can you
> boot from the rescue CD (or 1st Fedora install CD and enter "linux
> rescue" at the boot: prompt) and enter "fdisk -l" at the shell prompt?
> 
> Paul.
> 
I always keep a copy of the partitioning when I install I wont bother with 
track info
/dev/hda                size in mb
  /dev/hda1      vfat    5382
  /dev/hda2      ntfs   12925
/dev/hda3        extended
  /dev/hda4      vfat   30004
  /dev/hda5      vfat   20000
  /dev/hda6      vfat   20000
  /dev/hda7      swap   1004
 /dev/hda8       ext3   6991
I actually reinstalled grub to / before I quit yesterday figuring it
would be part of the solution. Reading the howto bootpart refers to
is very old since it refers to lilo but it says you need to copy the
bootsector.lnx to a dos floppy and then to the windows ntfs partition.
I guess I am not understanding it right. The last dual boot I did was
a win98 and it was easy.
                          Linda