GRUB is M.I.A after re-installing win2k
 

I'e had redhat 9 and win2k SP4 living happily on a single 80gb hd. win2k was on the primary partition and redhat had extended/logical partitions. I used GRUB as my boot loader which was working fine.

But visiting radsoft and being convinced SP4 was evil (plus the fact that the auto-update thingy was really !@$# me off) I made the fatal decision of formatting my 16gb win2k partition and re-installing win2k (with NO service packs this time). All this worked fine, however GRUB was GONE. I could still boot into redhat 9 but only with a boot disk.

Now, I've tried re-installing GRUB by booting up with RH9 disk 1, selecting 'update redhat 9', re-selecting GRUB as my bootloader with all relevant options (including trying to install it to both MBR and the other available option (sorry forgot what it was called)) but at the end of the setup I get a 'Warning' message saying in 2 lines something like:

No package changes made to kernel
no changes were made to boot loader configuration

I've tried every different option thats been obvious to me but nothing in the installation program (anaconda) prevents this warning message from showing up before exiting (save a fresh installation, which I'd rather not resort too).


Are there any other ways of re-installing grub/lilo without using anaconda (as it seems to be buggy)? Or any other/better boot loaders I could be using?

Why did the win2k re-installation delete grub?

I've tried using partition magic 7 and 8 but both are convinced the whole 80gb drive is 'BAD' and wont have anything to do with it -> which is strange as every other disk management program I've tested the drive with reports all partitions are healthy, go figure ...

but yer, any help would be greatly appreciated

Why remove SP4? What were the reasons?

http://radsoft.net/news/20020905,00.html

http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/257283

It might all be over-exagerated or even plain bullshit ,but hell I'd rather re-install win2k then read a whole EULA to be sure.

The fact that I may be using a "copied" win2k executive cd and plenty of "copied" software means I'm not to keen on giving M$ the legal rights to inspect my computer ...

Hmm - good old Radsoft. They are advocating not installing any fixes - like security and bug fixes. Nice way to leave your box open. The fact is that MS are unlikely to inspect your pc - you are one person among millions. It tends to be the crackers and businesses that need to worry. Secondly they are advocating staying with NT4 or 98 - NT4 was continually falling over and has a large number of insecurities and broken parts. Neither NT or 98 are supported by MS, so if any more insecurities are found, they won't be fixed.

Why not just grab a firewall (Kerio or ZoneAlarm) and block the programs when they ask for access?

it worked, cheers

as for win2k, its a lose-lose situation. I'm just biding my time until i'm confident enough with linux to convert for good. By that time there will hopefully be a really good, free version of winex that runs every game conceivable

allright, re-installing grub...

bootup your redhat, logon as root (preferably do su in a terminal) and then do grub-install /dev/hda

that should do the trick, granted your grub.conf is still in /boot/grub/grub.conf


windows install will automatically "fix" the mbr to make sure that windows is able to boot; windows fails to recognize anything but itself and gladly overwrites anything not labeled with M$