Configuring the Windows Boot Loader to include Redhat

[blues77]

Hi,

I just installed the Redhat Fedora Core OS and when it asked me if I wanted to install a boot loader I chose Grub and installed in the the first sector of my Linux partition. My problem now is that when I reboot my computer it doesn't come up with a menu for selecting which OS to load it just automatically loads windows. How can I configure the windows boot loader so that it will allow me to choose which OS to boot up? Any help is greatly appreciated!! I should mention that when Fedora asked me if i wanted to create a boot disk i chose "yes" but each time i inserted a floppy in my drive it kept saying that it couldn't detect a disk in the drive, so I don't have a boot disk unfortunately. I hope that this doesn;t present a problem

Thanks for any help
Mike

 

[mattjurado]

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

There's instructions here on making a boot disk as well...

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.

 

[blues77]

Hi Matt,

I tried the steps in the guide you provided but when I run the "linux rescue" utility and it tries to search for a Fedora Core installation I get the error "An error occured trying to mount some or all of your system. Some of it may be mounted under /mnt/sysimage." As a result I can't proceed with the rest of the steps. Is there anything else I can do?

Thanks for your help,
Mike

 

[chipperMDW]

I think the "standard" MBR works by looking for an active partition and loading whatever it finds in the boot sector of that partition. Thus, to see if the Fedora install worked, and you have Linux on the first hard disk, you could use FDISK from DOS to activate the partition containing GRUB, then reboot. If all went well, GRUB should start.

If that works, then you can set up GRUB to give you the choice between Fedora and Windows, and just leave the GRUB partition active and you should be fine. The Fedora install might even have already done that for you.


And to answer your question: as far as I know, there's no way to make the "standard" MBR select between different boot options. You could always replace that with GRUB, though. (If you do, take Matt's advice and back up your old MBR... even though you should be able to generate a new one pretty easily).

 

[CSdjohnson]

This is a little late, but I had a similar problem when I installed Mandrake. I have two hard disks, one with windows and one with linux and when I booted it would go right to windows with out asking me which OS to load. It turned out that I had to change the boot sequence in the bios to boot from the disk containing linux and then grub gave me the option to boot windows or linux.

Hope this is of some use.

Daniel

 

[blues77]

Thanks Guys,

I was able to get this working after reinstalling Fedora.