UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Well, I formatted my entire harddrive (40gig), partitioned it into three partitions, FAT32 for WindowsXP (30 gig), Linux ext3 (7gig), and Linux swap (about 500mb). All this with PartitionMagic 8.0 and it took hours. After all that, I installed the "publishers version" of Red Hat with ease. I was on the Internet w/n an hour. After that I installed WinXP. I got a message about another OS and that XP had to set itself to active to boot. OK, fine. After that all loaded and was working, I restarted the PC and it automatically started WinXP. No choice was provided. I installed boot magic (from the Partition Magic app) and it didn't recognize the Linux OS. So I clicked on "Advanced" and both Linux partitions showed up. I added the main Linux to the boot list and restarted the PC. I was given the choice of which OS to boot (yea!) but when I chose Linux, I got "Error loading operating system...." and there the PC sits, just staring back at me. Can anyone tell me what the heck I'm doing wrong? Thanks for any help you can provide.

Boot from your RedHat CD go itto the 'rescue' mode and choose the option that restores your boot loader.

I appreciate your reply! But, unfortunately, I wasn't able to access anything on my CD that allows me to repair the boot loader. At least, I don't see anything. I put in the CD, restart the PC, and have the option to type in "linux rescue". I tell it I want to use English, and then I'm in the shell at a prompt. I type help but don't see any command to allow fixing the boot loader. I don't know the commands. Any other ideas or suggestions? Thanks.

# grub-install /dev/hda

then

# shutdown -r now

Tux, thanks! It worked perfectly. I can boot either system with ease, now. The PartitionMagic BootMagic couldn't do the job. I'm assuming this is a different bootloader than GRUB!?!? Anyways, I appreciate your help and feel that I can dive into Linux more. Thanks again.

does anyone know how to make GRUB default to WinXP instead of Linux? If I have my kids reboot, I can tell them about making a choice. Not hat big of a hassle, but if the power goes out, it reboots to Linux, too, of course. Then they don't know what to do.
Thanks

At the top of the file /etc/grub.conf (or menu.lst) there is a line which reads default=x

x is usually 0 and that means it boots as default the first operating system in the list (zero-indexed). To change the default boot option you just change this number, remembering they start at 0.
eg If WinXp was the 3rd OS listed you would change the line to read
default=2

GRUB is nicely configurable and 99% of what you will need to ever work with is in this file, once changes are made you just save and reboot.