On 07/18/2004 06:05:33 AM, Mikael Konttinen wrote:
All,
I've finally got a working Windows XP again and no data loss on the
NTFS
data partitions, though it was done with a fresh re-install of Windows
XP.
During the installation of XP apparently the MBR was rewritten again,
this
time with the result that GRUB no longer works. Somebody mentioned
that
possibility earlier, though I didn't listen as I thought that since
GRUB is
written on the /boot partition and not on the MBR, it shouldn't be
affected.
Also, from what I've read (or the way I got it), Linux doesn't give a
fork
about the given CHS/LBA disk geometry and therefor shouldn't be as
vulnerable to inconsistency as WinXP apparently is.
Anyway.
What happens when I try to boot GRUB is that GRUB loads but halts with
its
command prompt. No menu anymore, though all kernel and conf files seem
to be
in place when I mount the /boot partition from a linux CD boot. I
recalled
the rows from the grub.conf and manually typed root(hd0,0) chainloader
+1
and boot to get back into Windows XP again so it seems like GRUB is
working
although it doesn't find the confs for some reason.
I've googled for this strange problem, but all results I find on the topic is about getting XP booting. Didn't find anything appropriate in the Bugzilla or FAQ and the man page didn't give me any clues neither.
Yours Mkn.
PS. I got infected with the non booting WinXP after installing Fedora Core 2 and the published LBA/sfdisk fix didn't work. Got a bit nervous there as I've got OS and NTFS data partitions on the same disk and really really really didn't want to loose the ~80-100 gigs of raw video and audio work as the result of a defect partition table. ... Yes, mom. Time to learn about back up routines. ;)
It's great that you didn't lose your AV data.
About grub after the reinstallation of XP. I had a similar symptom when upgrading systems before. I ended up booting from the first CD in rescue mode.
linux rescue
After getting into rescue mode, I typed the below to change the environment to the FC install.
chroot /mnt/sysimage
This gave me a shell with a bash prompt still, but the programs from FC worked fine.
Now, I would rerun grub-install. This depends on where your boot partition is located snd on which partition is active for boot. In my case /dev/hda1. I believe that you have /dev/hda2 setup as active and as your boot partition.
grub-install /dev/hda2
This works for me with several FC installations on the same machine. Why it sometimes corrupts with reinstallations of one OS or another is beyond me.
Good luck and hopefully this works for you. Backing up data is still wise to do though.
Jim
--
A quarrel is quickly settled when deserted by one party; there is no battle unless there be two. -- Seneca
