Folks,
I can confirm that the official FC2 does indeed have the same problem as previously reported with the test releases.
I got the ISOs yesterday from a Swiss mirror and installed on my dual boot Acer Aspire 1300 laptop.. I did a fresh install, preserving my existing home partition and leaving my existing XP partition for a dual boot.. same thing I've done for ages right back to the first RH usage of Grub... I have the real thing and not one of the older test releases.
During the initial install stages, if I recall as the disk druid bit was kicking in.. I was prompted regarding the LBA mode.. so I rebooted the laptop to force enable it.. my bios has no such option.. all it lets me do is set the time and boot order. So I rebooted and just ignored the warning.
It installed fine.. worked a treat.. but then when I tried to boot XP, it just hung on the grub console.. I tried the variations of suggested configurations for /etc/grub.conf.. adding makeactive etc.. made no difference, even after grub-install attempts.
I also used the XP cd to get a Windows recovery console prompt and ran fixmbr and fixboot and also tried BOOTCFG /rebuild.. but still a reboot just hung the XP boot... this was odd, because usually these commands overwrite grub, making the system a windows only boot, requiring a linux rescue from RH/FC CD to re-install grub in the MBR.
So it appears the issue is still there and will be the cause of much flame.. fearing I might have had a test release, I confirmed with the MD5SUMS again.. it is the official release that I got... the issue still exists!
On the recovery front, I booted from Knoppix as it has native NTFS enabled and was able to mount the existing windows NTFS partition.. its still there and seems intact.. so I was able to copy off files and FTP to another machine etc in prep for a new Windows install.. trouble is that I think if I do a clean install of Windows and then a linux rescue to restore grub, that the problem will still be there... I'll end up unable to boot the XP partition.
So it was a downer!.. and I realise that windows is bad and evil.. but I need to to have dual boots and I'm sure that many others out there are also in this boat.
Below are outputs from the fdisk -l command and the existing grub.conf file for anyone who is interested.
title Fedora Core (2.6.5-1.358) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.5-1.358 ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet initrd /initrd-2.6.5-1.358.img title Windows XP rootnoverify (hd0,1) makeactive chainloader +1
[root@dhcp-145 cormac]# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 30.0 GB, 30005821440 bytes 16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58140 cylinders Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 1 210 105808+ 83 Linux /dev/hda2 * 211 31425 15732360 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda3 31426 39750 4195800 83 Linux /dev/hda4 39751 58140 9268560 f W95 Ext'd (LBA) /dev/hda5 39751 41835 1050808+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hda6 41836 58140 8217688+ 83 Linux
Regards, Cormac
I had the same problem and found a way to restore the original partition table using fdisk. In short, I completely wiped out the mbr and recreated it from scratch using the original disk geometry. I posted more detailed information on fedora-test-list:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-May/msg02114.html
I hope it helps,
-- Radu
