Dual Boot XP/FC2 Install Problem

[Richard Heldmann]

> > I am trying to install FC2 on a Dell Dimension 8300, with a Seagate 
> > Model ST3120026AS SATA 120Gb hard drive.
> >  The controller is an Intel 82801ED Ultra ATA Storage Controller.  I 
> > have repartioned the drive with Partition Magic
> > and formatted the last 20Gb as ext2.  There are no errors on either 
> > partition and the machine boots into XP normally.
> >  Upon starting the installation with the known geometry,
> >
> > boot: linux hda=14589,255,63
>
> Why do you pass it the CHS geometry? Don't.

>oops - maybe too late already :| I did miss your subject along with the
>boot details. But are you really hit by the dual boot problem? Do you
>just want to prevent? The errors in your mail seem to indicate a very
>different problem.

I tried an install this past weekend, and the machine gave me the same
 error message when I loaded the CHS geometry(I was trying to avoid
 the dual boot bug).

Without the CHS geometry, the install proceeds fine, but when finished, I
can't boot XP.  I could boot into Fedora and into the Dell Diagnostic
Utility hidden partition.  As I remember, the Dell Utility hidden partition 
was given as
(hd0,0).  So I thought I could just modify the grub.conf file to (hd0,1),
to access the XP partition, but that file did not save correctly.  So I 
thought
I had a bad partition table.  I could not access my hard drive with the 
Fedora
 Rescue disk and could not issue the command:
sfdisk -d /dev/hda | sfdisk --no-reread -H255 /dev/hda
or the command fdisk -l /dev/hda

I ended up using: fdisk /mbr and that allowed me to boot back into XP.  One
other thing I have noticed since then, is that my Knoppix 3.6 CD can read my
hard disk.  The command: fdisk -l /dev/hda works and the command
sfdisk  -d /dev/hda also works.  I don't know if I can write to it.

What a mess!  I am lost.