Vista and Fedora 10 dual boot problems

S

Syphontwo

Member
Ok, I'm new to Fedora, completely so I'll give a brief explanation of my problem, then what I am trying to accomplish with everything in more detail.


My problem:

Starting with 2 HDDs, one 80g IDE master and one 80g SATA

I install Fedora on the IDE with 40g with / mount and 512 mb with /swap. The rest of that HDD is left unallocated for windows to format into NTSF.
Fedora installs properly.

I try and install vista 32 bit ultimate. It refuses to install on the SATA drive that is formatted for windows, so I let it install on the IDE. It will not install with Fedora on the same drive no matter what I do.


I then changed the order,

I install windows first, formatting (I think) all drives back to blank with no partitions then set aside one drive in NTSF for windows and 35g on the other, leaving a little over 40g unallocated for Fedora. Windows begins to install seemingly well. Upon reaching the first reboot during the install, the computer goes into grub. I have no idea what this is, I am a complete noob. But from m understanding, it is a Linux thing which I thought I had deleted. So I reboot and force m computer to boot off a different drive. The problem is, it always seems to put vista on the IDE whether I select drive0 or drive1 for the installation, (I've tried about 5 times). So windows never installs properly.




Ok, what I have:

Windows Vista install CD
Fedora 10 Live CD


What I want:

I want 40g set aside on the IDE master drive for Fedora, plus 512mb for swap, the rest I want left alone for vista to use to store things like music and pictures and such. The SATA1 drive I want to be solely for vista. I want the primary boot to be Vista with the dual boot option of Fedora



What I am trying to accomplish:

I am trying to set up my computer to use primarily vista for classes and gaming, however I have one class which requires some MAC based software. I cannot afford to buy a MAC computer for just one class, so I am trying to run Fedora and use the emulator MOL (MAC On Linux) to run the MAC based software for said class. Also it would be nice to be able to run basically ALL software on my desktop regardless of the OS it was made for.



I am not sure what I am doing incorrectly, or how to make sure that Windows is installed on the SATA drive instead of my IDE.


I'm new to all this, so it is probably much easier than I think, but the fact that I have never once used linux is making this very difficult for me to grasp.

Addendum:

Update on issue:

When I installed Fedora first on the IDE and tried to install windows, windows would come up with the error "Criteria for installing system files not met on the selected drive" no matter what I did. I then installed fedora, disconnected the hard drive, and installed windows on the correct HDD, then reconnected. Windows recognized the HDD and the correct allocated space I had set aside for windows and nothing more. Then, when trying to boot Fedora, I got the error "Missing operating system".

I am currently attempting a reinstal of Fedora on the correct location, wish me luck :smile:
 
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You're simply going about it the wrong way. If you want Vista on the sata drive first partition that to NTFS after unplugging the ide drive. EIDE overrides sata where the Windows installer as well as Fedora is placing the boot loader on the ide drive in conflict.

Unplug the ide drive, install Vista, plug the ide drive back in, and format that to ext 3 using the Core 10 installer. The Linux installer will place it's own boot loader "bootPart 2.x" where you assign the mount point. Remember the sata drive has to be set as the default boot device in the bios once this is done in order to follow the guide for dual booting.
 
Unfortunately it is to late to try this tonight, however I will definitely try this tomorrow during the day.

If the SATA is set to the default boot device how do I set up windows to recognize the other operating system and give me the choice before it starts up? Or is that done automatically? Also, how do I format only 40g to ext3 on the IDE drive and still get the "bootpart2.x" you are referring to? I'm sorry, I'm so very new to all this.

Thank you for the help, it is greatly appreciated!
 
Once you have Vista running on the sata drive and go to plug the ide drive back in that will then become the default boot device. The Fedora installer will ask if you want to resize partitions and even remove existing Linux partitions in favor of Fedora.

The Wiki for dual booting Vista and Fedora together is seen at http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/Fedora
 
Perhaps its GParted? Did you use that to format the partition for ntfs before trying to install Windows? I've been playing around with it over the last few days myself to find it does something funny sometimes when formatting Windows filesystems where Windows can't read/write from them. It isn't a necssary step here since the Windows installer can format the partition before installing to it, so reformat the partition it refuses to install to during the installation.
 
The latest 0.3.9-13 is now just replaced with the 0.4.1-2 build at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=115843&package_id=271779

The latest builds automatically detect the monitor you use and set the display to the native resolution unlike the old live 0.3.3.0 release where you were stuck at 1024x768. Once you simply right click on the partition you select the format option and choose NTFS as the file system to make it ready for Windows to go once formatted.
 
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