CAN not BOOT FEDORA-lost grub

[surabhivasu 0]

Hi,

I am using compaq notebook 40 bg , fitst i installed windows Home edition in c drive and later i installed fedora core 3 on another drive. I have 6 partions .

 

After few days since i want setup server i installed windows 2003 server on another dirve. Now problem i can not find grub

when boot pc and i could able boot in to fedora core 3.

 

please any can help me ..How to get gurb back or how boot in fedora . please help me i really don't know what i have do

is there any software which can recover previous MBR.

 

[sorin-razvan.popa 0]

Hi surabhivasu,

 

What you could do:

 

(I assume you have a single HDD with 6 partitions).

 

- Start computer with 1st CD of Fedora Core 3;

- When options prompt appears, type "linux rescue" (without quotes) and press "Enter".

- Confirm messages that will appear;

- After it is loaded, type (without quotes): "chroot /mnt/sysimage" and press "Enter";

- type "/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda" and press "Enter";

(Here /dev/hda is the MBR of your HDD!!)

 

- type "exit" to reboot and press "Enter";

 

Grub boot-menu should appear again

 

As a personal note, the last OS to be installed should be Linux (All Windowses first, then Linuxes).

 

Good luck and regards,

 

Sorin-Razvan Popa

[danleff 0]

I'm having a little trouble understanding your post.

 

Are you saying that you have one hard drive on the laptop, with 6 partitions and all the OS' you are referring to are on the same hard drive?

 

Let's asssume this is the case.

 

When you install any OS, by default, it will overwrite the MBR, unless you tell it to do otherwise.

 

So, you installed Fedora and told grub to install to the MBR?

 

Grub will only know about the other OS' that you installed BEFORE that Fedora installation. This is why you always install Windows before your Linux choice. Linux will automatically find the previous Windows installation and offer to dual boot. Windows will not.

 

When you installed Windows 2003, it overwrote the MBR. So grub booting is gone.

 

Where did you install Windows 2003? Did you allow it to take over the C partiton?

 

I just had an interesting experience installing Fedora's new test 5. Things keep changing on the installer, so bear with me.

 

You have two choices.

 

 

First Option

 

Boot the first Fedora installation disk and at the boot prompt for the installation add linux rescue to the command line. Hit enter. When you get a command prompt, type in;

 

chroot /mnt/sysimage

 

This gets you to the root of Fedora, as if you were at the command prompt within the root of Fedora.

 

Then to recover Grub to thew MBR, type in;

 

grub-install /dev/hda

 

Do not type in hda1!, just hda.

 

Make sure there is a space between grub-install and /dev/hda.

 

The command pronpt should come back with no errors.

 

This should get back grub, as the bootloader. This may work, or it may not, depending on your installation sequence. BUT, your last install of Windows 2003 will not be a choice at boot, because grub does not know about it, unless you installed it to where Windows Home Edition was originally, the "c" partition.

 

 

 

Second option:

 

Making a lot of assumptions about how you installed Fedora and your two Windows flavors, the best solution would be to re-install Fedora.

 

This will assure that Windows is found and grub is installed correctly.

 

Understand that you need to have a plan when installing any OS. Plan ahead of time what you want on the system, then proceed. This will avoid such problems.

 

Ask questions if you have any doubts.

 

BTW, I deleted your other untitled post, as it was a duplicate of this one.

 

 

 

 

[surabhivasu 0]

helo....any one can u pls provide site administrator email address

 

 

[danleff 0]

Either start a post in the feedback section, or scroll down to the bottom, click on Philip and send him a Personal Message.