repair grub loader over network is it possible?
 

i have a laptop with no cdrom drive and no floppy drive just usb ports (which if i understand correctly can not be booted from). i accedently deleted my swap partition along with the linux drive with my partition magic, last night after a few to many drinks. so now i am at work tying to use my laptop and when i turn on my laptop it just comes up with:

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GNU GRUB version 0.97 (638K lower / 1439680K upper memory)

[Minimal BASH- like editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename.]

grub>

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is there anyway to fix this over my network? i had a dual boot system with windows xp and fedora 5 or 6 i dont remember. we installed it all over the network when i was going to school. but that was a long time ago and i have no idea how to do it now. but is there anyway i can fix this boot up with out lossing all of my stuff? please help

Yes you can, assuming your machine has a network connection from which it can boot. If so, put Knoppix into a nearby machine and tell the running instance of knoppix to let other machines netboot it (I don't know how this is done, but google might). Boot up your laptop into knoppix. Either run gpart (a part of knoppix) or download, compile and run testdisk; testdisk should be able to recover your partitions if you haven't scrambled them too much (I've had positive experience with this, and no experience with gpart). That's what I'd do.

You can also just enter GRUB commands directly at the prompt. Chances are you've managed to re-order your partitions so GRUB can't find its configuration file. You can type in the kernel and initrd commands by hand and then tell GRUB to boot them (it helps if you have another identical system to compare to so you get the correct kernel image and initrd). Then you can redo grub-install from within the OS to fix it up.

Also, some newer computers can boot from USB -- check your BIOS (if your laptop is more than a couple year old, though, forget it). I've booted a CentOS rescue image off of a USB thumb drive.

From your description it sounds like you didn't remove your WinXP partition(s). Chances are WinXP is installed on (hd0,0). You can boot into windows using the following commands at the grub prompt.

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

If you want to get Fedora Core installed again that will take a bit of searching and reading. Booting from a network is more complicated and you will need a server that has been configured to do this. The Fedora core site mentions Booting from the Network using PXE, but they don't go into much detail.

If your goal is just to get WinXP running you'll need to uninstall the grub boot loader. Typical way of doing this is using the WinXP CD in rescue mode and giving the command FIXMBR at the console. I don't know how to accomplish that without a floppy or CD. Guess the best place to start looking for that would be the Microsoft site. Sorry I couldn't be more specific with my answer.

Bill

Just found this article on Installing FC and thought it may be of some help.

Bill