Hey all,

First of all, apologies for all that will be offended by my total lack of research into this matter. Yes, I did absolutely no looking up on this, and yes, if I had time to fiddle I could probably work it out on my own. But I am terribly strapped for time at the moment, with a couple of deadlines looming...so I'd really appreciate if someone helped me out, and I will return a favour first chance I get.

To cut the long story short, I had to format my drive (the c: drive) and reinstall windows on it. Grub was hosed in the format, so now I still have my linux partitions on my other drive, but I can not get into it (no bootloader).

I do not have the bootdisk, but I do have a similarly configured box, also running RH 7.3 at work on which I could make a bootdisk.

Can someone tell me/point me to a resource where I could find the steps neccessary for restoring a bootloader? Or even better, can someone tell me how to tell the windows XP loader to see the linux partition? I tried looking at the bootloader of XP but I do not understand it, it does not make sense like good ole LILO does.

Please help, if you can, I'd be much oblidged...

Vlad.

Do you still have the installation cd's? If you do this is very simple to fix. If you don't It can be very difficult.....

windows has a BOOT-LOADER?!?! HOLY COW!

you should be able to install lilo with an install cd right?

There are several standalone bootdisks available. I recommend Tomsbtrt . After you download and follow instructions to write it to a floppy, boot from it, chroot to your linux root partition and rerun the map installer. Let LILO handle your boot menu.

yes windows has a boot loader
and that is the ntbootloader
which only supports the windows os
that means you can use more than 1 windows os through the boot loader
if you have enough technical know-how you can even boot linux through this boot loader
first boot into your linux partition with the root previlage
then do
dd if=/dev/hda1 of=./LINUXSECT.PBR bs=512 count=1
copy the LINUXSECT.PBR file into your dos system partition
edit the boot.ini file below
[operationg systems] add
C:\=LINUXSECT.PBR="Linux"

next time you boot into windows
there will be choice of linux too
click on linux to boot into your linux partition
more information on linux howto

There is a easy way out of the trouble even for a lack of knowledge
Put the Installation CD into your cd drive
And boot through it
1.If you have enough knowledge choose the rescue mode
That is that you know in which partition you have installed your linux or if you have created a boot partition -that partition.Usually it is like /dev/hda/b/c/dx where a,b,c,d are determined by where have you connected your harddisk(primary ,secondary -master,slave) and x is the partition number -if you have extended partition that contains logical partition it will be greater or equal to 5.If primary partition it will be between 1-4.
Example:hda8
Rescue mode can be entered by typing linux rescue in the boot prompt.
The rescue mode will boot into a rescue console.
Now type grub on the console.
next you can type find /etc/fstab
it will show a particular partition exhd0,5)
now type root (hd0,5)
next type setup hd0
grub will be installed
if you have a boot partition
instead of /etc/fstab search for /grub/menu.lst
2.If you can't do the above
boot from the red hat cd
and choose upgrade instead of workstation or custom
finally after a upgrade process it will install the bootloader again