dual booting linux for the first time

so I am setting up a dual booting system so I can play around and transition into linux a little easier. I am having trouble getting it to work properly. my setup is as follows. I am running xp that is installed to a 120 gig drive that is set to master, i have a 60 gig drive that is set to slave both of these drives are on the primary ide cable. I have installed red hats fedora to the 60 gig. I set the boot loader (grub) to the begining of the drive( I think it was the second option available in the install) then i reboot. first nothing happens. so i go into the bios and change boot order so that the first thing it boots to is the hd that has linux on it. I then get grub at the bottom of the screen but nothing else happens. This is where I am lost. i am not sure where to go next. The only thing I can think is that I have to have both os's installed on the same hd but with different partitions. All help id appreciated. I am currently scanning red hats site but I figured I would throw a post up here as well. Thanks again.

The method I have used is to put the bootloader on the primary master hard drive,
I wasn't aware that a BIOS could be set to boot either drive directly. They used
to always seek the primary master, so, if you had the bootloader there, it could then
give you a choice of OS.

There are as many different ways to do this as there are people, so read up on the grub
Howto. You can use the windows bootloader to dual boot linux, but a little more to set up.
Anyway, I'd try to do it without changing the boot order in the BIOS, as it is not necessary.
:cool:

Put Grub on the MBR of the first HD. I'm not sure how you planned on booting up Windows when Grub is on another HD and doesn't probably even know it's there. When you partition, why not just have Linux on the First HD with Windows and set the second HD and a partition for /home or something like that? This way Linux and XP are on one Drive and Grub can be put in the proper place.

Linux uses Partitions just about the same as it would another HD. But Grub is a boot loader and needs to know that another OS is actually there or it can't boot it. Make a small partition on your XP drive for Linux like the Swap and put Grub on the MBR and the rest of the other drive can be the rest of the Linux partitions..

**** I hate doing this with text, it's so much easier to explain by showing. Something that would take me all of 3 seconds to do.

Fedora isn't exactly the best option either but that's another topic.

Because gore wanted to show you rather then trying to explain it in plain english ;) :D...

I found a LINK to a webpage with actual pictures of the screens (funny :D )of a dual boot installation Windows XP and Fedora Core 1 with the use of GRUB.

It's a bit old but still current enough to help you if your still stuck.

And here is the link to the GRUB manual incase you need it.

C.

thanks everyone. I will be diving into that a little later today. I did decide to make a partition on the master drive for linux and am using the other drive just for storage. so after much moving and resizing of partitions I am ready to install again.

well I got fedora installed and i can boot to it but only if I change the boot order in the bios. I think I messed up on grub but I cant figure out where. I have looked all over the manuals and installation guides but non one spells out how to set it up. no matter though. I think I will try and install another distro and see how things work out.

ok so now I have got slackware 10.2 installed and I have lilo booting to both os's and it seems to be working great. However i cant get slack to start into kde. I did select it as the main gui to use. is there something else i need to do to get it to default into kde? I am cur4rently reading some stuff in other places but any help is appreciated. Also what is a good site to find drivers for wireless nic cards and that kind of stuff? Thanks again.

init 4

or

startx

init 4 must be done as root though.

great. thanks again.