fixing boot screwup
 

Alright, I did a stupid thing, and long story short, I can only get to the grub menu when I boot up. I just want to be able to make WinXP the default OS so that I can boot to it. Now, before you tell me to do anything with the recovery console, I've already tried that and have had problems with it, so it isn't going to work. I do have a Knoppix CD which I am using on the computer but I don't know where to go from here. I am an idiot when it comes to this stuff, so I'm not going to understand everything you say.

I don't understand ... the Linux that grub came with is gone?

Cheers,
Tink

Ok, the standard question is; which distro are you using? It probably does not matter in this case, but it is good to know.

Grub can be repaired but I have never broken it so I cannot help you there.

The usuall fix other than repairing grub is to insert the original install cd, and start an install. There should be a "Repair" option early on that does not take you to the recovery console. Are there any irreplacable files on the Linux system? If not it might be easiest to go through the reinstall. Just do not format anything. Most of what you have should be there when you are done. It should not touch your WinXP partition; just be careful which partition you pick to install Linux on.

Come back and tell us more.

C

Not clear what you are after. Are you trying to edit the grub boot menu? In that cae you need to open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst in a text editor.

1) change bios to allow cd to boot before hard drive then run a live cd such as kanotix or knoppix.


If your first post means you can not boot anything follow steps 2 & 3 otherwise jump to 4......but you must answer peopleś questions for us to help you better...if this is not useful to you tell others what you need and what you HAVE DONE pls pls pls

2) when it loads click on the shell icon to run the konsole (Command line interface ) program/application

3) type su (to get root powers) (system admin powers)

then the following commands with PRESS enter key
grub
root (hd0,5) ......or whatever your boot partition is on
setup (hd0)
quit


the root command as per tut needs to find /boot partition.


4) Now for the bit that arubin alluded to.

to edit the menu file that is /boot/grub/menu.lst you need to mount and make writable the correct partition with the live cd/dvd running.....or edit it later when you can boot into linux

lets say you have 6 partitions and they are IDE so show up as icons on your screen as hda1 to hda6.

Lets pretend hda6 is your /boot partition
so right hand click that icon and change it to read write
then I use the command konqueror from step 3 so its
open a konsole
su
konqueror
Now navigate to the menu file and edit it like my tut so you have a chainloader menu for MS

Be explicit if you fail to understand what I have written eh?