hey,

The cd drive on my sony vaio laptop doesn't work and i was wanting to
install fedora core 5 along with windows xp. I tried to follow these
instructions:

http://imthi.com/blog/73/index.php

His discription of what i should see after running wingrub does not
corispond to what actually happens for me. I put grub for dos on my
computer and it seems a little more similar. I think both are
installed now and the boot process gives me two different screens

the first screen is light blue (cyan?) on a black background and has
many options that corispond to this menu.lst:

# This is a sample menu.lst file. You should make some changes to it.
# The old install method of booting via the stage-files has been
removed.
# Please install GRLDR boot strap code to MBR with the bootlace.com
# utility under DOS/Win9x or Linux.

color black/cyan yellow/cyan
timeout 30
default /default

title find and load NTLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP
fallback 1
find --set-root /ntldr
chainloader /ntldr
savedefault --wait=2

title find and load CMLDR of Windows NT/2K/XP
fallback 2
find --set-root /cmldr
chainloader /cmldr
savedefault --wait=2

title find and load IO.SYS of Windows 9x/Me
fallback 3
find --set-root /io.sys
chainloader /io.sys
savedefault --wait=2

title find and boot Mandriva with menu.lst already installed
fallback 4
find --set-root /etc/mandriva-release
savedefault --wait=2
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

title find and boot Linux with menu.lst already installed
fallback 5
find --set-root /sbin/init
savedefault --wait=2
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

title commandline
savedefault --wait=2
commandline

title floppy (fd0)
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)
savedefault --wait=2

title back to dos
savedefault --wait=2
quit

title reboot
savedefault --wait=2
reboot

title halt
savedefault --wait=2
halt

title memdrive duplicated from floppy image file (hd0,0)/sbm.bin
map --mem (hd0,0)/sbm.bin (fd0)
map --hook
chainloader (fd0)+1
rootnoverify (fd0)
savedefault --wait=2

title memdrive based on win98 partition (hd0,6)
map --mem (hd0,6)+1 (hd0)
# map --mem (hd0,0)/win98.gz (hd0)
map --hook
chainloader (hd0)+1
rootnoverify (hd0)
savedefault --wait=2

title Fedora Core 5 Install
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz
initrd (hd0,0)/boot/initrd.img

however, this last entry, which i added myself, does not appear on the
menu. I tried booting this last option manually by typing its code in
the place of one of the other options at run time and I was told
vmlinuz was not a valid command. I have this file in both partitions
of my harddrive and tried booting with both hd(0,0) and hd(0,1) as the
base device.

perhaps vmlinuz is corrupted since it took forever to download (same
with initrd.img). I dont have winrar to extract these files from the
..iso so maybe someone could send me an copy?

so, choosing the first option (boot windows xp) i get another boot
choice. windows xp or start grub (I added the line C:\grldr="Start
GRUB" to my boot.ini as directed, so i think this is what i'm
loading). choosing "start grub", i get the hal.dll missing or
corrupted message. Thats where i'm at so far.

I have the fedora 5 .iso's on both the 6 gig partition which i want to
install fedora on (fat32) and in the shared documents folder of a
computer on our house network which my lap top connects to via ethernet
cable (ie not wireless). The network computer is running windows xp as
well and their hd is ntfs. Either harddrive or network installs would
work for me, but i feel like I wouldn't be able to install to the same
partition that the .iso's are on (linux is going to need to write all
over that partition).

Any direction would be greatly appreciated. I can boot from a floppy if
theres an easy way to start the install process from that. By the way,
I'm a total inux noob.

-010 010

ps I just read the comment at the top of the menu.lst about running
bootlace. I ran bootlace and got a list of switches i could add. I
have no idea how to proceed with this bootlace buisness. I think maybe
wingrub did it for me.