GRUB failure after WinXP re-install

Ms Mugdha Jain mugdha at cse.iitb.ac.in
Sun Jul 18 10:17:43 UTC 2004


Hi,

Boot from a CD.
Do : fdisk -l 
Now find out, which is your /boot partition.
check that this is the same in your /boot/grub.conf

now run /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda(or whatever is your primary hard disk)
hope this will help.


On Sun, 18 Jul 2004, 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. ;)
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Bye,
Mugdha.

Visit me at http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/~mugdha/





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