Cant Boot Windows7 after Fedora 12 install

[gcmartin]

I have a laptop that has multiple partitions and was running Windows 7.

I installed Fedora in a area of free space in the extended area, thus in a logical partition.

Fedora is now running on the laptop. But, at boot time, there is NO BOOT MANAGER. The laptop just boots straight away to Fedora.

I know this has probably been covered, but is there an "official" procedure or document available to us newbies that I can use to recover my system such that it boots all of my installed bootable partitions (including Windows7)?

Help please

[CSchwangler]

I don't know if there is an official guide for this, but the internet seems to be full of articles. So here are just two of them:

http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/a...oot-windows-7/

http://www.thpc.info/dual/win7/dualb...b_on_win7.html

[PabloTwo]

Well, there is a boot manager after you install Fedora. It's called the GRUB boot loader. The problem is, by default the grub boot menu is made hidden (not displayed), and worse, it has a default of zero (0) seconds timeout. How brilliant is that?

To make the Grub boot menu display without having to hit any key at just the right instant early in the boot process, you can edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf. You will need to be root to do that If you are using Gnome, and thus have the gedit text editor, you could:

su -
enter roots password when prompted
gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

Comment out the line that says hiddenmenu by putting a hash in front of it so it reads #hiddenmenu
Edit the line that says timeout=0 to timeout=5 (that's in seconds, adjust to your liking)

You could also change the title of the Windows entry, which by default it labed as "Other", to more accurately describe your Windows OS.

If you prefer to have Windows be the default boot option instead of Fedora, then edit the line default=0 to whichever position the Windows entry is. Each choice begins with the name "title". Grub counts from zero (0), so if you still only have one Fedora kernel, the Windows entry would be the second choice, or default=1 to make Windows the default OS to boot into. You, of course, can use the up/down arrow keys at the grub boot menu to select which OS or specific Fedora kernel to boot.