[Devin Becker]

Hey

I'm brand new to Linux, I know virtually nothing about working in it. I downloaded FC3 and installed it onto a second hard drive, which is my slave. WinXP is on my master hard drive. During the installation of FC3, I chose to install it as a dual boot, and now everytime I restart, it brings up a screen that'll load XP in 3 second or I can choose to load FC3. This worked perfect until...

I have now decided that I want to set FC3 as a server and put it into a different computer. How do I go about making my computer boot up to XP like before I did the dual boot?

[danleff]

Click on the related links topic under these posts "Want to uninstall RedHat 9."

Look at shobhit's post, which describes the process of restoring your Windows MBR and removing Fedora throgh Windows.

Just in case, the link is here.

[Devin Becker]

Thanks!

[Devin Becker]

Now I have a problem. I went into the Recovery Console for the command prompt and I selected the installation, but it's prompting me for an administrator password. I never set an administrator password...is there a default one or something?

[danleff]

Are you an administrator on this system?

While in Windows, go to start-->Control panel-->User Accounts.

Does it show your name as administrator?

If so, click your account-->create a password.

Also, for reference, see this link.

[Devin Becker]

Ok, I did fixboot and fixmbr, and it said it did them successfully. It's not bringing up the blue "Fedora Core 3" screen that allows me to choose. However, when I disconnect the hard drive containing FC3, it doesn't allow me to start up my computer. Does it make a difference that I haven't formatted it? It just goes straight into windows when both are connected.

[danleff]

What error(s) are you getting trying to boot the system w/o the secondary drive installed?

You are sure that the drives are jumpered and cabled correctly?

By chance, you did not change the boot order in the bios at some point for the hard drives, so that the first hard disk boot device is hdd1 rather than hdd0?

[Devin Becker]

After the 5 mins (much longer than usual) it takes to get to the error screen, it says "DIsk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter."
My Primary Master is my WinXP drive, and my Primary Slave is my Linux drive. I never changed the bios either.

[danleff]

It sounds like the MBR was written to the slave disk.

Look at this Microsoft article.

Follow the directions to right click on My Computer-->Properties-->click the Advanced tab, choose Settings under Startup and Recovery. Under System Startup, click Edit.

Look at the boot.ini file and see if it says something like;

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

Under default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

Does it say multi(0)disk(0) or disk(1)?

make special note of the setting under operating systems.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows

Does it say disk(0) or disk(1)?

[Devin Becker]

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

[Wilhelmus]

"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)" = MBR, is it not?
Try going back to recovery console and typing these (again):

fixboot C:
Boot sector written to the C: drive.

fixmbr \Device\HardDisk0
Boot record re-written for the first disk drive.

[Devin Becker]

I did that, it still doesn't work. The contents of that file are:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn

which seems to be exactly the same. hopefully you guys have some other tricks up your sleeves! I don't want to format both, but I understand if there isn't a way around it.

[danleff]

Actually, I do have a couple of other ideas.

Do you know the exact make and model hard drives that are on the system? If so, post the make and model of the master drive in the system. It may be a jumper setting...

If you are absolutely sure that the jumpers are set correctly to master and slave on the drives and that none are set to cable select.

If your master hard drive has a setting for single drive only and you plan to just keep the master drive in the system, this could be an issue. With only one drive in the system, the jumper may need to be set differently.

Go into the bios and see if the drives are detected correctly as master and slave. while there, see if the bios is set to "auto" to detect the master drive, or is it set to "LBA."

Did you do a full takeover install of Fedora on the slave drive, or did you partition the drive to make room for Fedora, leaving the first partition as, say fat32? Did the slave drive once have Windows installed on it?

Make sure that the windows boot.ini drive is resident on the master drive. Click on My Computer...choose tools--> folder options--> view and click to show hidden files.

Then go to the c drive and see if the boot.ini file is located in the root of c.

[Devin Becker]

If your master hard drive has a setting for single drive only and you plan to just keep the master drive in the system, this could be an issue. With only one drive in the system, the jumper may need to be set differently.

Problem and now solved.

It works now, thanks for all your help guys. I love how the problem is always the one that's the most obvious =P