dual boot help! 1

[pritska]

This is what I did:
within XP Pro, on a sony vaio laptop (brand new), using partition magic, created a 6GB partition, of which most is for ext2 (for linux) and 500ish for the swap. rebooted and it went through the process of creating the partitions. Loaded up windows fine.
I chose restart with redhat 7.3 CD. Using GRUB bootloader, made the mount point on root of new partition, leaving windows (NTFS) partition intact. There was some tickbox which asked where the bootloader should go and as per advise of other users and partition magic, made it on the mbr.
Installed fine and then when rebooted, NO option to load windows.
My question is how I can get the dual boot to actually offer me dual booting!

 

[Bigchris]

Boot your computer to Red Hat, login as root, open a text editor like Kate or something, open the file /boot/grub/grub.conf. Place the following lines into the file like this (provided XP is installed on hda1):

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1


If you place it before the lines that start with,"title Red Hat Linux" then XP will boot as default. Place it after the lines for Red Hat and Red Hat will be yoyr default OS.

 

[pritska]

thanks. I think because I tried to install a wireless card on the laptop, I've done something to it and it's now not booting into the Redhat Windows type GUI. Just a command prompt with localhost/ showing. I can log in as root as it's the only user there, but am still trying to work out how to edit that file you mentioned.
Also, in an attempt to give up, I tried to repair xp, and when I tried to log into the windows install, it asks for an admin password. I have ONE user setup on the computer, and there is NO password set for that. Am going to try the word password and if that doesnt work then I'm pulling my hair out.
Watch this space and any ideas/ tips on how to get out of this mess would be most appreciated!

 

[pritska]

BigChris, Thank you SOOOOO much for that tip, it's worked! The only thing now is that when I want to boot linux, it doesn't actually load the GUI, just to the localhost command prompt. I used PICO command to edit the file. Learning loads now.
Thank you VERY much mate, a pint for you!

 

[perrymans]

Command line is a good way to enter Linux. All you have to do is login and type startx at the command prompt.

You can also edit the /etc/inittab file to load straight into the GUI. Look for this entry:

id:3:initdefault:

The 3 means you go to the command line. Change this to 4 or 5, depending on your distro. I believe Red Hat is 5 (Slackware is 4). Then perform a reboot.

Sean

 

[Bigchris]

Regarding /etc/inittab

id:3:initdefault:

I have a Red Hat (8.0) partition that boots directly into GUI. That is an option that you agree to during the installation of Red Hat (GUI boot is default). Upon checking my /etc/inittab it looks like this:

id:5:initdefault:

I agree with "perrymans." Change it from 3 to 5 with Red Hat.

(Red Hat = 5)
(Debian = 2)
(Slackware = 4)

bigchris