I have installed Vista Home Premium (64 bit) on a new 250gb HDD and used Disk Management to resize the partition of the entire drive (using Shrink).
To the unused space I’ve installed Fedora 11.
Windows booted OK before the Linux install, but now (unsurprisingly) Linux boots instead and does so OK. I can see the Windows files on the disk so they are not overwritten.
My problem is I’m not getting a GRUB menu on startup to choose either Vista or Fedora.
I can’t find a way to get at the GRUB menu to manually edit it.
I’ve tried sudo gedit/boot/grub/menu.lst (but I get ‘I am not in the sudo folder’ to use it - seems like authorisations again)
Presumably I need to manually edit the boot menu and place there items for Vista recongition - but how and where do I access this?
All advice appreciated.
First, I thought Fedora 11 used grub2 not grub legacy… if this IS the case there won’t be a /boot/grub/menu.lst, it was replaced by /boot/grub/grub.cfg (which you are NOT supposed to edit manually)
So you need to find out which exists menu.lst or grub.cfg
In the following commands you might have to replace menu.lst with grub.cfg
Don’t edit menu.lst without backing it up, and don’t edit grub.cfg at all, just post the contents.
Second… the command as you typed it is wrong… you typed sudo gedit/boot/grub/menu.lst
you missed a space after gedit… it should read
sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
or if sudo isn’t installed
su
gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
hit enter after each line… you will be prompted for the root password.
can you post back the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.cfg
and the output from
sudo fdisk -l
or if sudo isn’t installed
su
fdisk -l
BTW that’s a small L in the fdisk -l command
Have you tried
sudo update-grub
and checked to see if grub “finds” Windoze automatically?
(After backing up /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.cfg of course)
Many thanks for taking the time and trouble to reply to my thread. I have both Vista and Fedora 11 on my system and had difficulty with it booting only into Fedora. I can now see why. The GRUB screen on start up is only displayed for around 5 seconds which is far too short for someone unfamiliar with the system. I am now booting both Vista and Fedora successfully - but I still need to change the GRUB file to offer something longer than 5 seconds before booting into Fedora rather than Vista. I’ve tried searching for a GRUB Editor and have come across QGrub Editor, which seems to no longer be in development. Would you suggest I use this to get at my GRUB file (which is as you say grub.conf and not as I earlier stated) in order to change the time ‘the choose to enter the Menu’ stays on screen? And, if so, which site is a safe one to download from. I’m familiar with sourceforge, but not many others. Thank you one again.
IGNORE THIS POSTING…SEE THE NEXT 2 POSTINGS BELOW
The correct way to alter the Grub2 timeout is to edit /etc/default/grub… so open a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /etc/default/grub
and hit enter
when gedit opens, look for the line
GRUB_TIMEOUT="10"
the number might be different... change the number to however many seconds you want the menu visible for, and save.
Now back in the terminal, enter
sudo update-grub
and hit enter… you’re done 
I wouldn’t use QGrub Editor, as it probably doesn’t support Grub2
Be interested to know if update-grub works on Fedora … I had thought the update-* family of commands were debian/ubuntu/mint specific … ??
Apparently you are correct… In Fedora (11) you ARE supposed to edit /boot/grub/grub.conf directly.
So, open a terminal and type:
sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf
and hit enter.
When gedit opens, look for the line:
timeout=5
Change the number to however many seconds you want the menu visible for, and save.
(eg. timeout=10)
Save and exit… Done.
Or from memory, if you put timeout=0 it waits forever … ??
Many thanks for your advice - it has been much appreciated. I am now up and running OK. Although new to Linux I am not new to computing. I am just about worn out with the idiosyncracies of Vista and will only now use it for those programs of absolute need. Otherwise I will stick with Linux.