Windows 7 and Fedora 10 Possible Disk Problem

jerryyyyy

Member
Have used this product without problems in the past. I have now tried Windows 7 plus Fedora 10 on an older Dell. I have no problems with installing Windows 7 but when I try to get the dual boot going I get series of errors stating it cannot find the /boot folder.

I have tried various configurations of the Fedora install. Any suggestions of a sure fire recipe.

I could install Fedora first then follow with Vista/Windows 7, but this is a long road.
 
Hi, Jerryyyyy. :smile: Welcome to NST.
It would help a lot for people who want to help you with your problem to state more clearly precisely what you have tried so far, i.e. whether Fedora 10 and Win 7 are already installed, the exact error messages, and so forth.

Cheers.

-Coolname007

EDIT: Here's our documentation in the wiki on Fedora: Fedora - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
It may help you prevent making any mistakes when installing (if you have not already done so) Fedora. Good luck. :smile:
 
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If you installed Fedora after W7, you've probably overwritten the W7 boot with grub.
If so, boot the W7 DVD again and "repair my computer" / "repair startup", to put the W7 bootloader back. (If W7 is as much like Vista as I think it is, you'll need to do this 2 or three times)
Then use EasyBCD to add an entry for Fedora to the W7 BCD.
 
Don't think the linux distros have support for auto-detecting W7 installations yet (only XP and Vista). If you would rather use grub, you'll need to add the entry manually.
 
Hi, Jerryyyyy. :smile: Welcome to NST.
It would help a lot for people who want to help you with your problem to state more clearly precisely what you have tried so far, i.e. whether Fedora 10 and Win 7 are already installed, the exact error messages, and so forth.

Cheers.

-Coolname007

EDIT: Here's our documentation in the wiki on Fedora: Fedora - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki
It may help you prevent making any mistakes when installing (if you have not already done so) Fedora. Good luck. :smile:

Thanks for the comments. This problem is reproducible and I am not sure if it Fedora 10 or my system.

First, the system is a Dell Precision 340 workstation. It has two hard drives. I have tried various installs, but what I have is on disk 0 Windows 7 is installed in the first 50 or so MB. It is was installed as an upgrade from Vista using the Dell OEM disk. Vista was a clean install. This boots alone with no problem.

Second, there remain about 15 MB that are unformatted on the disk. I do the default partitioning from Fedora 2 that puts /boot into /dev/sda2 as ext3 and /VolGroup1 into /dev/sda3 in LVM PV format (I am unfamiliar- but tried a manual format with ext3 and got same errors). I install the Fedora bootloader into /dev/sda2 as instructed in the Wiki rather than in the MBR. I delete the Windows 7 "other" OS when setting up GRU just leaving the Fedora option as suggested in the Fedora page of the BCD Wiki.

Install of Fedora proceeds normally. At reboot goes right into Windows 7 and I use BCD 1.72 to add the Fedora boot to the Windows 7 bootloader as per the Wiki. I then reboot.

I get the two options of Windows 7 and Fedora 10 on the initial screen.

I choose Fedora 10 and I get the normal progression of Fedora 10 with a little blue line at the bottom saying it is loading.

THEN, I get this on w black UNIX-type screen:

unable to access resume device (dev/VolGroup01/LogVol01)
mount: error mounting /dev/root on sysroot as ext3: No such file or directory
There then follow additional disgnostics in the format
sd 2:0:0:0 [sda] 143374650 512-byte harware sectyors (73400MB)
sd: .....

Which I assume refer to a description of the disk...

Now on Google there is some talk about the resume error, but I have been with Fedora since release 3 and never seen it before and I have 10 installed on 3 other machines dual booted with XP and no problem... using GRUB

Maybe this is a problem with my older disks but I have Vista drivers installed and Windows 7 installed fine.

Suggestions cordially accepted. :wtf:
 
Ok...so have you tried adding an entry for Fedora 10 in your Vista bootloader with EasyBCD, making sure to select the correct drive that Fedora's installed to, under the Linux tab, in the "Drive" drop-down menu, and choosing the Grub option in the "Type" drop-down menu? :wink: Also, did you take a look at that link to the wiki documentation on Fedora that I gave you?

-Coolname007
 
Fedora appears to be booting from your description. Either files that are needed are missing/install didn't complete or you're passing bad/invalid parameters to the kernel.
 
Fedora appears to be booting from your description. Either files that are needed are missing/install didn't complete or you're passing bad/invalid parameters to the kernel.
No, Justin. :smile: As you can see from the following quote, he gets a resume error when trying to boot into Fedora from the Vista bootloader. :wink: That is why I asked if he made sure the entry was pointed at the correct partition Fedora was installed to...
I choose Fedora 10 and I get the normal progression of Fedora 10 with a little blue line at the bottom saying it is loading.

THEN, I get this on w black UNIX-type screen:

unable to access resume device (dev/VolGroup01/LogVol01)
mount: error mounting /dev/root on sysroot as ext3: No such file or directory
There then follow additional disgnostics in the format
sd 2:0:0:0 [sda] 143374650 512-byte harware sectyors (73400MB)
sd: .....

Which I assume refer to a description of the disk...
 
I choose Fedora 10 and I get the normal progression of Fedora 10 with a little blue line at the bottom saying it is loading.

THEN, I get this on w black UNIX-type screen:

It appears to be booting but than crashes. That is what I meant.
 
I appreciate the comments. What I did was I was suspicious of my older Dell Precision Workstation disks so I cleaned off the primary disk and tried to do a clean install of fc10 on the main disk and got these errors on the boot (ah ha). I then cleaned the disk and installed fc6 and no problem with boot. Sounds to me like some nuance of a driver problem with fc10 versus 6.

To fully get going I have now reinstalled Windows 7 on the front end of the main disk and installing fc6 on the back end with the defaults and not using the MBR boot.

This obviously is taking hours, however, when I get fc6 installed again I will try to re-establish the dual boot. I can live with fc6.. old system was fc3.

Again thanks for the help and tune in tomorrow if I can get the sucker to dual boot. I am going home now and let fc6 install. Am learning a lot in the process, but would have rather just had the system work a week ago.
 
I appreciate the comments. What I did was I was suspicious of my older Dell Precision Workstation disks so I cleaned off the primary disk and tried to do a clean install of fc10 on the main disk and got these errors on the boot (ah ha). I then cleaned the disk and installed fc6 and no problem with boot. Sounds to me like some nuance of a driver problem with fc10 versus 6.

To fully get going I have now reinstalled Windows 7 on the front end of the main disk and installing fc6 on the back end with the defaults and not using the MBR boot.

This obviously is taking hours, however, when I get fc6 installed again I will try to re-establish the dual boot. I can live with fc6.. old system was fc3.

Again thanks for the help and tune in tomorrow if I can get the sucker to dual boot. I am going home now and let fc6 install. Am learning a lot in the process, but would have rather just had the system work a week ago.

Glad you got part of it to work! :grinning: Let us know how your dual-booting attempt goes...:wink:

Cheers.

-Coolname007
 
OK, it works. Bottom line was I replaced fc10 with fc6 and there was no problem (everything routine). I notice on the fc6 start after selecting it on the flash screen I see a couple disk errors which may be relating to the inability to mount the Vista/Windows 7 partition, but it goes on the boot the Linux partition.

As I suspect, this set of problems relates to the 5-year old Dell disk and some interaction with the drivers on fc10. I would hate to debug this further if fc10 were the only distro available.

Thanks everyone
 
OK, it works. Bottom line was I replaced fc10 with fc6 and there was no problem (everything routine). I notice on the fc6 start after selecting it on the flash screen I see a couple disk errors which may be relating to the inability to mount the Vista/Windows 7 partition, but it goes on the boot the Linux partition.

As I suspect, this set of problems relates to the 5-year old Dell disk and some interaction with the drivers on fc10. I would hate to debug this further if fc10 were the only distro available.

Thanks everyone

Good. I'm glad you everything working ok. :smile: Let us know if you have any more questions.

-Coolname007
 
If its problems with F10 reading the partitions you could probably avoid it using hide/unhide lines in your menu.lst for the partitions its giving errors for.
 
If its problems with F10 reading the partitions you could probably avoid it using hide/unhide lines in your menu.lst for the partitions its giving errors for.

Thanks, I'll remember this if I have to make this computer work. Likely not as I have a lot of newer Dells and this does not seem to be an issue with a lot of other machines. I'll read up on Fc10 in some other posts. FC10 is really quite nice in general.

If you are interested in what we do with this mess look under flight simulation, aging and Stanford.

Cheers
 
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