Hi guys, Well I might aswell admit it - I'ma complete newbie. I've got a degree in computing (nearly) and so I thought I'd see what the big fuss is about over in the linux camp. I had it working on my machine for about 2 days before I had to reinstall (random problem unrelated to linux). Now I reinstalled but my new toy wont work! :( I think this is probably fairly common. I've seen a few article mentioning this sort of thing but I dont understan what they are going on about so I thought I'd ask here before cocking the thing up even more. Here's what I did: - I installed WinXP first like the manual suggested, so that went all fine. - I then fumbled my way through the redhat installation. Well it all went fine until it started going on about partitions. I understand what I need to make the thing work but I must have done something wrong as it wont boot. I made the necessary partitions... - It then asked me if I wanted to install Grub and I said yes (because when I didnt the first time I could only boot when the startup floppy was in the drive). I thought I had done everything just the way I wanted and that everything was done properly. I was expecting this grub thing to popup at restart and ask which OS I wanted to boot. When installing it I said i wanted XP to start first, and it does, but it doesnt give me the option to load linux! It just goes right on and loads XP! Not even the old startup disk I have works anymore :( Can someone please please explain what Iv done wrong and explain how to fix it. I would be so, so grateful. I really like linux from what i could see of it. A number of realy nice features but I'm really disapointed that I cant use it:( Kindest thanks to anyone who can offer any advice/solutions Simon

I myself am a newbie to linux. I installed Mandrake a couple of times before it became a good install (due to many various problems). Here is a link that may solve the problem. It's done with NT though: http://www.benchtest.com/dual_nt_linux.html Read through it and look at the bottom of the page where it talks about the boot.ini file. Hope that helps. Kevin.

Thanks mate. I actually tried to reinstall about 4 times and eventually it worked. I thought that installing grub on the mbr would lock me out of XP but it didnt! I finally got so angry that i just tried it and it paid off. Thank god Thanks for taking the time to help me. I hope you enjoy using linux! Good luck Simon

Dual-booting is easily avoided by getting a couple of cheap (~20 dollars, I use Vipower VP-10 series) hard drive swap racks and keeping the OSs on different drives. This is so convenient I do it to switch between Windows versions as well as Linux distros. When all storage and boot media are easily removable life is much simpler. :)

You did not tell us in detail you partition procedure. E.G /, /BOOT, etc.