RC2 hangs trying to boot

[Per Bothner]

On 05/13/2011 04:27 PM, Clyde E. Kunkel wrote:
> I have to make some assumptions, but try this:
>
> 1) boot into rescue mode and find your RC2 and follow instructions to
> chroot into it.
> 2) grub-install /dev/sda  (This is where I assume your windows
> partitions are.  If not, then grub-install /dev/sd<whatever drive
> windows thinks has the MBR)
> 3) reboot and grub should come up with the grub menu
>
> You may have to use the windows install disk to recreate the windows
> boot manager and then you will have to repeat 1-3 again.  Once done you
> can mod grub.conf to add:  rootnoverify (hd<where the windows boot
> manager is) then next line chainloader +1  in order to boot windows from
> the grub menu.

Thanks for the advice - but I suspect it wouldn't have been enough,
based on what I had to do:

I had to get rid of the EFI/GPID partition information.
To do that I used gparted's Device -> Create Partition table.
This essentially erased the entire disk.
I then made sure that "enable UEFI boot" was disabled in the BIOS,
and re-installed Windows, leaving most of the disk free.  After that,
I was able to install Fedora RF2.  And finally, dual-booting is working.

One indicator of the problem:  originally (i.e. before replacing the SSD),
and now (when things are working again) Windows created one small helper
partition, in addition to the C: partition.

However, when first installing to the new SSD, Windows created *two* small
helper partitions, one for the EFI boot process.  This situation confused
Anaconda and/or Grub in a way that Grub did not install itself in a place
when the boot process would find it.  I'm assuming the Windows install
process detected that UEFI boot was enabled, and installed itself in
such a way that Anaconda couldn't do the right thing.
-- 
	--Per Bothner
per at bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/