[Niels82]

Hey

I reinstalled WinXP and lost the grub bootloader. I know this has been asked alot and ive read several answers but havent found anything that works for me. #/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda gives that "grub" cannot be found, although its there. Ive ran "linux restore" after inserting cd1 to get there..

Running update (got FE2) I can fix the bootloader again, BUT when its installing/updating my system it does not change my bootloader cause "no changes were made to the kernel" or something like that, so my choice to reconfigure it does not take affect and the update simply does nothing.

I tried to install Partition Magic 8 now but cant find out how to fix anything with that program as for BootMagic.. its greyed out and I can simply not use it.

I didnt create "bootfloppy" cause no, i dont have any floppys and I will never buy any

[martouf]

too bad you didn't create a bootfloppy for Fedora. It would make it much easier to fix
the overwritten master boot record. The Microsoft installer doesn't believe it should
play well with others, so it just overwrites the MBR.

You need to be able to boot Fedora and mount your /dev/hdaN to fix this.

NOTE that's "/dev/hdaN" where N is the correct integer to specify the Fedora boot partition.

NOTE that's __NOT__ "/dev/hda" which is a reference to the ENTIRE
disk.

Once you've got Fedora booted and /dev/hdaN mounted, the documentation for
/usr/sbin/grub-install with help you fix the MBR. Google for step-by-step recovery
instructions, otherwise.

[Niels82]

Thanks, I found a fast and nice sollution.

Im probably not the only one so Ill write down what I did so others can fix it also

restore grub fedora core 2 after installing xp

- insert installation cd1, reboot and write "linux rescue" and hit enter

- mount the installation (done automaticly in FE2 at least, not sure about others. If not just mount it)

- # chroot /mnt/sysimage (or wherever it was mounted)
- # grub-install /dev/hda
- # exit
- # exit

and its all back to normal

[Dapper Dan]

That's good information niels82! Thanks for posting it!

[danleff]

Good deal. I remember seeing this before. I could not remember the correct chroot command to get to root of the rescue system.

And hda is correct, as you wanted to write to the MBR of the primary master drive, not a partition, when usng the grub-install command.

Nice troubleshooting!

[martouf]

I couldn't tell if niels82 understood how to mount the 'dead' Fedora partition and didn't
want the restoration to get stuck at not knowing /dev/hda refers to the disk as a whole.

grub wants to store away a copy of the existing bootblock before it goes and overwrites it.
That's why it can't find the right place to save the copy unless the live filesystem is the
root filesystem (or you've chroot'ed so the correct filesystem is now the apparent root
filesystem).

In other words, once you've gotten the dead partition mounted you need to chroot to the
place/directory you've mounted it so that the partition is now the apparent root filesystem.