Fedora Core 3 (part2) Install Results

TJ- · Dec 19, 2004, 01:54 AM

Well after 2 weeks of trying to get the iso images burned, getting my hard drive partitioned and so on, i finally braved the unknown and installed FC3.

All seemd good until i got to the partition page, I thought i had read enough about it to ease through it, but hell no, it took me about 1.5 hours to figure that crap out, and in the end i think i made a mistake. Got through the installitation ok, rebooted the comp, and came to the dual boot screen ran by GRUB. Selected Fedora and finally i was in a new operating system, played around with it for a bit and then wanted to go back to windows to get some drivers for my modem so i could hook up to the net.

Rebooted,...

... and choose Win Xp. Then my worst fears came true, i got a blue screen with a error saying...

STOP: C000021a [fatal system error]
The session Manager Initalization system process terminated unexpectatly with a status of 0xc000003a
The system has been Shut down.

My heart just sank...

I rebooted and it wouldnt even let me get back into fedora...So then i reinstalled Winxp and it was the weirdest thing, as soon as i finish the installitation i goto Help Centre and all the writing is blured and it crashes everytime..

Installed it again, deleted the linux partitions all seems to have worked out. But then my modem wouldnt install. Aslo had problems with installing Motherboard drivers and more annoying problems,, so i installed win xp again, finally it all worked...

Next time i attempt to install FC3 it will be on a seperate hard drive, it is definatly no easy task, the Grub and Partitions being the hard thing. What i saw of fedora though i liked so i will try again...

Just a warning to everyone planning on installin linux on a dual boot system,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, be careful !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sircave · Dec 19, 2004, 08:18 AM

Man let me tell ya, I think most of us went through what you are going through and some of us are still moving through it.

But you got through the worst of it by being able to get past the fear of an attempt. Don't let it bother you. You get back on that horse and ride that beast until you achieve Linux greatness and you will be able to laugh

when you think back to these days. I am a newbie as well, so I feel your pain.

P.S. At least you were smarter than I was when I first started my linux experience. I never backed up my data. Lost everything!!!

But never again.

TJ- · Dec 19, 2004, 09:14 AM

haha.... why does it have to be so hard though.... installing windows is a simple as taking a piss.... i guess thats why linux is free.... ill give it a month before i attempt it again.... oh and i dint back up my data...i though i could do it no problems... but i didnt lose that much anyways and was prepared to lose it all.... (damn linux) !!

shaman9876 · Dec 20, 2004, 10:33 PM

Is your bios set to auto config the harddrive's? If so that could be the cause of your problems. If you set it to LBA it could of fixed it. When ever I install Linux of any kind I always make sure I am using LBA. I have seen many posts of peaple that get there Partition table messed up because of this. If you check out these 2 links they have more information. You can also try upgrading your bios if it is old. Since you have a fresh install you could ghost your drives or use partition magic to back the data up. A reinstall for either of those is real quick. Also it is better to do it now while you cannot lose anything.

I feel your pain I had this happen once myself about a year ago on an Mandrake 9 install.

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...=&postid=14703

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=115980

TJ- · Dec 22, 2004, 11:26 AM

thats some instresting reading, seems im not the only one with that problem, but it still doesnt make it any easier...

Im gunna wait til i got a full day and a new hard drive before i attempt it again, im also gunna read and print out every piece of info i can possibly get if i get stuck during the install.... linux im comming for you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

shaman9876 · Dec 30, 2004, 02:16 AM

Found a web site that will help you not lose your harddrive geometry and not messup your windows xp setup. You do need to download the rescue cd for it though. Here it is. http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/ I know it says fedora core 2 but people have been using it with fedora core 3. This is what I am going to do for I am going to retry fedora core 3 myself when the linux drivers come out for my 9700pro. Which according to this thead http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...9&page=6&pp=30 It should be after the web developers get it posted after the new year.

post number 158 by Matthew Tippett of ATI linux department.

TJ- · Dec 31, 2004, 08:49 AM

thankz man.... ill keep ya posted...

EcPercy · Jan 1, 2005, 07:50 PM

In fedora it should take about 5 seconds to use the auto partition option. It would do some good though to read up on what the partitions are used for and then you will know which ones you need and how big to make them. I have a FreeBSD machine here and when I first installed it I used the auto partition and then realized that I didn't need half of the "partitions" (called slices in BSD) and I installed it with a manual configuration.

There really should not be any problem with dual booting a linux system and windows together, but before you installed you should have read up on how to accomplish it. There are some tricks that you have to do in order to get it to work...

Definitely do not give up! You seem to have learned your lesson. Get another drive! Try various distributions out there until you find the one that you like. Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, and Xandros are good to learn with.

I have a good friend that thinks that debian based linux versions are the best.

shaman9876 · Jan 4, 2005, 07:16 PM

I thought I would give you an update on my install. On first attempt I got harddrive errors during the begining of the install. So I followed that guide I gave the link to and It worked like a charm. I booted the rescue cd then typed "fdisk -l /dev/hda" to get the boot sector information the Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors "CHS" of the boot drive. Then I booted the first install
CD and when it gave the first menu I typed "linux hda=14593,255,63" except I used my CHS information and I had no more errors and the install worked like a charm.

I even can boot into XP

Even with a second hard drive you need this information for It needs to put the bootloader in the MBR which is why you have to give it the drive geometry of the first harddrive.

This work around is great. Hopefully yours will go better next time.

Dec 19, 2004, 01:54 AM	#1
TJ- DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Infinity Posts: 3,682 Rep Power: 0	Fedora Core 3 (part2) Install Results Well after 2 weeks of trying to get the iso images burned, getting my hard drive partitioned and so on, i finally braved the unknown and installed FC3. All seemd good until i got to the partition page, I thought i had read enough about it to ease through it, but hell no, it took me about 1.5 hours to figure that crap out, and in the end i think i made a mistake. Got through the installitation ok, rebooted the comp, and came to the dual boot screen ran by GRUB. Selected Fedora and finally i was in a new operating system, played around with it for a bit and then wanted to go back to windows to get some drivers for my modem so i could hook up to the net. Rebooted,... ... and choose Win Xp. Then my worst fears came true, i got a blue screen with a error saying... STOP: C000021a [fatal system error] The session Manager Initalization system process terminated unexpectatly with a status of 0xc000003a The system has been Shut down. My heart just sank... I rebooted and it wouldnt even let me get back into fedora...So then i reinstalled Winxp and it was the weirdest thing, as soon as i finish the installitation i goto Help Centre and all the writing is blured and it crashes everytime.. Installed it again, deleted the linux partitions all seems to have worked out. But then my modem wouldnt install. Aslo had problems with installing Motherboard drivers and more annoying problems,, so i installed win xp again, finally it all worked... Next time i attempt to install FC3 it will be on a seperate hard drive, it is definatly no easy task, the Grub and Partitions being the hard thing. What i saw of fedora though i liked so i will try again... Just a warning to everyone planning on installin linux on a dual boot system,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, be careful !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! __________________ new sig comming soon

Dec 19, 2004, 08:18 AM	#2
sircave DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: In a Stone Cave Posts: 21 Rep Power: 0	What a Brave Soul Indeed Man let me tell ya, I think most of us went through what you are going through and some of us are still moving through it. But you got through the worst of it by being able to get past the fear of an attempt. Don't let it bother you. You get back on that horse and ride that beast until you achieve Linux greatness and you will be able to laugh when you think back to these days. I am a newbie as well, so I feel your pain. P.S. At least you were smarter than I was when I first started my linux experience. I never backed up my data. Lost everything!!! But never again. __________________ Cowards die many times before their deaths, The valiant never taste of death but once. William Shakespeare 64-bit AMD® Athlon™ 64 (Socket 754) 3200+ @ 2.21GHz, K8N Neo Platinum nVIDIA® nForce3 250Gb Chipset V1.1, Creative Audigy 2 ZS Gamer PCI Sound card, Three Kingston 512MB DDR400 PC3200 Mem One Western Digital SATA 160GB HD, One Western Digital IDE 160GB HD, Nvidia FX5900XT-VTD128 AGP Video Card, Yamaha 24x10x40x Burner,Liteon 16x DVD± Last edited by sircave; Dec 19, 2004 at 08:19 AM. Reason: spelling

Dec 19, 2004, 09:14 AM	#3
TJ- DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Infinity Posts: 3,682 Rep Power: 0	haha.... why does it have to be so hard though.... installing windows is a simple as taking a piss.... i guess thats why linux is free.... ill give it a month before i attempt it again.... oh and i dint back up my data...i though i could do it no problems... but i didnt lose that much anyways and was prepared to lose it all.... (damn linux) !! __________________ new sig comming soon

Dec 22, 2004, 11:26 AM	#5
TJ- DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Infinity Posts: 3,682 Rep Power: 0	thats some instresting reading, seems im not the only one with that problem, but it still doesnt make it any easier... Im gunna wait til i got a full day and a new hard drive before i attempt it again, im also gunna read and print out every piece of info i can possibly get if i get stuck during the install.... linux im comming for you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! __________________ new sig comming soon

Dec 31, 2004, 08:49 AM	#7
TJ- DriverHeaven Extreme Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Infinity Posts: 3,682 Rep Power: 0	thankz man.... ill keep ya posted... __________________ new sig comming soon

Dec 20, 2004, 10:33 PM	#4
shaman9876 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: USA, WI Posts: 65 Rep Power: 44 System Specs	Is your bios set to auto config the harddrive's? If so that could be the cause of your problems. If you set it to LBA it could of fixed it. When ever I install Linux of any kind I always make sure I am using LBA. I have seen many posts of peaple that get there Partition table messed up because of this. If you check out these 2 links they have more information. You can also try upgrading your bios if it is old. Since you have a fresh install you could ghost your drives or use partition magic to back the data up. A reinstall for either of those is real quick. Also it is better to do it now while you cannot lose anything. I feel your pain I had this happen once myself about a year ago on an Mandrake 9 install. http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/sho...=&postid=14703 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla....cgi?id=115980

Dec 30, 2004, 02:16 AM	#6
shaman9876 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: USA, WI Posts: 65 Rep Power: 44 System Specs	Found a web site that will help you not lose your harddrive geometry and not messup your windows xp setup. You do need to download the rescue cd for it though. Here it is. http://lwn.net/Articles/86835/ I know it says fedora core 2 but people have been using it with fedora core 3. This is what I am going to do for I am going to retry fedora core 3 myself when the linux drivers come out for my 9700pro. Which according to this thead http://www.rage3d.com/board/showthre...9&page=6&pp=30 It should be after the web developers get it posted after the new year. post number 158 by Matthew Tippett of ATI linux department.

Jan 1, 2005, 07:50 PM	#8
EcPercy DriverHeaven Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Iraq Posts: 1,524 Rep Power: 48	In fedora it should take about 5 seconds to use the auto partition option. It would do some good though to read up on what the partitions are used for and then you will know which ones you need and how big to make them. I have a FreeBSD machine here and when I first installed it I used the auto partition and then realized that I didn't need half of the "partitions" (called slices in BSD) and I installed it with a manual configuration. There really should not be any problem with dual booting a linux system and windows together, but before you installed you should have read up on how to accomplish it. There are some tricks that you have to do in order to get it to work... Definitely do not give up! You seem to have learned your lesson. Get another drive! Try various distributions out there until you find the one that you like. Fedora, Mandrake, Suse, and Xandros are good to learn with. I have a good friend that thinks that debian based linux versions are the best.

Jan 4, 2005, 07:16 PM	#9
shaman9876 DriverHeaven Junior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: USA, WI Posts: 65 Rep Power: 44 System Specs	I thought I would give you an update on my install. On first attempt I got harddrive errors during the begining of the install. So I followed that guide I gave the link to and It worked like a charm. I booted the rescue cd then typed "fdisk -l /dev/hda" to get the boot sector information the Cylinders, Heads, and Sectors "CHS" of the boot drive. Then I booted the first install CD and when it gave the first menu I typed "linux hda=14593,255,63" except I used my CHS information and I had no more errors and the install worked like a charm. I even can boot into XP Even with a second hard drive you need this information for It needs to put the bootloader in the MBR which is why you have to give it the drive geometry of the first harddrive. This work around is great. Hopefully yours will go better next time.