hard drive problem

[alanone]

I have two hard drives. One had Fedora Core 2 (linux), the other windows. The dual boot worked fine. However, I recently reformatted the drive with fedora core on it, and windows will no longer boot. I reinstalled fedora core, but to no avail. I have googled the problem, and the solution that seems to make the most sense is to run fixmbr from the windows install disk. However, I have no idea if the master boot record is the real problem, and do not know if this fix is a good idea. I hope somone can help.

 

[turtile]

What you found sounds right. If you reformat the OS that set the boot loader then it should be gone.

 

[alanone]

I reinstalled fedora core 2, which works fine (seperate hard drive). I have been researching the problem and it seems that it may be due to fedora messing with partitoining tables. when I try to start windows, the xp loading screen comes on briefly, folled by a blue screen and then the computer reboots al by itself. The reason I think that it may be a problem with the partition tables is because i cannot run the repair conole with the windows disk. It says that my admin password is incorrect (it isn't). furthermore, norton goback, which I have installed, cannot access the drive. Should I try reinstalling FC2? Thanks for your consideration.

 

[turtile]

I would install Windows first then install Fedora afterwards.

Do you use PartitionMagic to format the drives?

 

[turtile]

...

You have two drives?

One drive is the boot drive. So you will need to reformat that one.
It would be easiest if you reformated both so if your wrong you don't have to do it all over again.

 

[alanone]

Hey. I was able to get fedora running, and I was able to set it up for reading NFTS or whatever, and then I was able to retrieve my data from the windows hard drive. I don't really know how I did this, I just followed some instructions I found with google. Thanks for the advice on reformatting. i will do that next. By the way, would you reccomend partion magic for setting up my hard drives, or should I let the windows disk take care of it? Can I boot from partition magic or run it without windows (which still doesn't work, I can only copy data from that drive to the other one and then back it up on cd)?

Thanks very much for your help.