Grub prevents bootup
 

Question: How to fix grub so I can boot?

Background:
(system previously dual booted win98SE and Mandrake 10CE)

1) Old mobo (soyo k7vta-pro) went flaky. Windows could only boot into safe mode. MDK worked fine. Grub worked fine.
2) Replaced the mobo with MSI km266 (newegg, of course...). MDK handled the switch ok, windows didn't
3) Reformatted C: and reloaded win98, then upgraded with win98SE.
4) When it came time to boot from HD, the last thing displayed was 'GRUB' . No keystrokes would be accepted. Didn't look like a GRUB prompt, just the word 'GRUB'.
5) Boot from win floppy, fdisk to remove C: partition and re-create it.
6) Repeated step 3 above. Still has the problem where it hangs on boot, the last thing displayed was 'GRUB' .
7) Tried fdisk /mbr, didn't help.
8) Tried booting from MDK CD to fix grub. Could only boot from CD #2, and this wanted to 'Install MDK'. (No MDK boot floppy. I think mkbootdisk failed 'no room on device'.

I was hoping that my family would get used to MDK while I ordered and received the new mobo, but they still want Windows back (heavy sigh).

Why didn't the fdisk/reformat of C: wipe out grub?

How can I get it working so they can have Win and I can have MDK? I can't get in to work with the config files, as suggested in many posts in this forum (Yes I searched first). And I don't get a boot prompt to pass anything on for the boot process.

.:scratch:

[edit]
Yes, my avatar shows Slack 9.1, and I'm talking win and MDK. But this rig is for the family room; my Slack box downstairs runs fine :D
[/edit]

as you have slackware running, I assume you have slack CD's? boot from a slack cd, with wich it should be possible to mount your mandrake partition. after mount, chroot to the mount point and you can re-install GRUB from there... for entering you linux HD, use these commands on a console from the slackware boot CD:

cd /
mkdir hd
mount /dev/hdxx #where xx=your linux root partition
chroot hd /bin/bash

from here you can re-config and re-install GRUB, of wich I don't know so much...

greetz & success,
.-=~ iluvatar ~=-.

Thanks, iluvatar.
Why didn't I think of doing that? I have a toybox full of cd's with knoppix, slax, sysrescuecd, etc, etc,,, I must have been experiencing a brain cramp at the time. Well, it was getting late, and I had been wearing my 'MS Windows' hat for a while. Must have clouded my brain... :rolleyes:

Will try again tonight.

LOL weren't you warned wearing that hat is dangerous?

greetz & succes,
.-=~ iluvatar ~=-.