Hi,

just installed FC2 on a machine that already had XP running successfully. FC2 installed automatically onto /dev/hda6, 7, 8 (boot, root, swap).

During the installation, I chose to install grub on the root linux partition instead of overwriting the MBR. However, on reboot after completing the installation, the grub screen never appears. Worse,
Error loading operating system
appears on the screen and nothing else happens.

Having searched the web, I changed the hard drive setting in the BIOS from "auto" to "LBA". This got rid of the error message, but now the boot hangs at "verifying DMI data..." and does not proceed.

I can access FC2 via linux rescue on the install CD and the winXP data is accessable through the XP install CD. The first priority is to get XP back and booting properly without any data loss, can anyone help? Then the next step will be to get linux dual booting properly.

I have seen the fixmbr command option in several posts on the web, is this a safe option or is it possible that it will make my windows data totally inaccessable? Similarly for "fdisk /mbr" etc.

Need help here, cos it's a friend's machine and he AIN'T impressed!

1) Boot from rescue CD
2) Grub-install on the MBR

This won't break XP - trust me. If FC gets confused and doesn't give you an option to boot Windows this is dead easy to fix - at the GRUB menu you grab a command line and say:

root (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
boot

(change first line depending on drive config)

fdisk /mbr will also work fine but then you can't boot into Linux, which is obviously no good.

TIM

Tim, thanks for getting back to me so quickly. A couple of questions before I go for it:

1) I read that fdisk /mbr should not be used for harddrives with more than 4 partitions. There are 5 windows partitions (not all primary obviously), would this cause a problem with fdisk?
2) If the above is true, would fixmbr from "windows restore" in the windows install cd work instead?
2) can you please give me the exact command to install grub on the mbr ( I don't know how it's referred to in grub - hd0,0?)

And also some information: "fdisk -l" shows the boot partition to be hda1 (not hda6)

Cheers - I know that this isn't a terminal problem, but I hate having a PC down that's not mine and I don't want to it to put my buddy off linux!

Hi,

Sorry I have no idea about the first two.

You need to boot from the rescue CD, then mount your root partition under, say, /mnt/hdroot. If you have a separate /boot partition mount it under /mnt/hdroot/boot.

Now issue the command:

grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hdroot /dev/hda

That should do it!

TIM

thanks again Tim. FC2 is now booting thanks to you. However, Win XP will not boot from grub, I have tried calling every (non-linux) partition in the WinXP section of grub.conf. I know I saw a potential solution somewhere involving the command sfisk but now I can't find it! If anyone can point me in the direction of that solution, or has another solution, I'd appreciate it.