Right,

I have an Amilo M3438G which has two internal disks.
One 1st disk I have Windows XP Home installed along with PowerCinema.

On second disk I have installed Suse 9.3. I installed GRUB on the the second disk as I did not want to make any changes to 1st disk with XP on.

Anyway I ran the following command to get the boot image...

su -c 'dd if=/dev/sdb2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1'

I then copied bootsect.lnx to C: and added to boot.ini as below...

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
C:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

When I reboot, I get the windows boot menu and select Linux but all that happens is the word GRUB appears in top left hand corner and it just sits there until I do a ctrl + alt +del.

Anyone got any ideas ???????

Can you boot to a rescue disk, cat your /etc/grub.conf file? When you installed linux, was it aware of the other disk? It's possible that grub is trying to boot some partition on your first disk instead of your second disk.

When I installed Linux it was definately aware of my other disk as it gave a warning saying I was installing GRUB to the second disk which was not the main boot disk and asked me if I wanted to change the order the disks booted which I declined.

How do I do the rescue boot you mentioned ?

Do I just go through the installation process then select repair and then boot from there ?

Pretty much. The exact details can be found here:
http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/pub/d...ngssystem.html

Did you install to the MBR of the second disk, or to a (root) partition ???.
Without being able to see the (M)BR on the second disk I'd suspect the former. Try the following instead of your original dd command, then copy it across as you did before

I installed grub to boot sector of partition /dev/sdb3
(sorry there was typo in my code is should have read /dev/sdb3)
Anyway, not /dev/sdb

Hope that helps, I am totally confused lol

So to clarify, i think

/dev/sda1 = windows XP & powercinema

/dev/sdb1 = windows fat32 partition
/dev/sdb2= swap
/dev/sdb3 = linux + GRUB

Contents of grub.conf...

setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 (hd1,2) (hd1,2)
quit

Your grub.conf seems to be missing a kernel and a root, something like
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9 ro root=LABEL=/

You should do an
ls /boot/vmlinuz*
to determine what kernel you have installed and add the appropriate line to your grub.conf file.

Hi,
I too facing this problem. here is my PC settings:
Machine name: HP-BRIO
Operating System: Windows 2000 Professional (5.0, Build 2195) Service Pack 4
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
System Model: HP Brio
BIOS: Default System BIOS
Processor: Intel Pentium III, ~650MHz
Memory: 192MB RAM
Page File: 79MB used, 379MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINNT

I have Two Hard disks. On Fist one I installed win-2000 and on second 40GB, which was partitioned as four parts D(6GB), E(6GB), F(6GB), and G (22GB). I have installed RedHat-9 (now it is Ubuntu 5.4) on G drive. My Bios can read only unto 33GB. That is why leave 8GB space as not-usable and installed the Base system on usable(I mean BIOS readable) space.
I installed Ubuntu in hdd3 and installed grub boot loader on root partition (Linux root hdd3) and with the command #
dd if=/dev/hdd3 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
created bootsect.lnx . Then copy bootsect.lnx file to C:\ for start up screen to change OS. When I reboot and try to login to Linux Grub say error. Should I choose MBR option to install grub? Hope you got my problem (I follow this procedure in red hat. It works well).

Yuck - patooee !!! - man, I *hate* automated installers.
Even the one's I have to use I hate - and Suse is right up there amongst the worst.

Shandy, looks like you interupted the process too early. This is not a reasonable grub.conf.
If it were me I'd run the setup command from the grub prompt, then fix the grub.conf - but maybe you should ask on the Suse forum here on LQ.
I was never able to get Suse 9.3 to install either grub or lilo, so gave up in disgust.

What error message do you get from grub ???. Let's see if we can fix this before thinking about installing into the MBR.
Also please post the output of (that's ell, as in l{ist}). Command can be done from a liveCD in need.

Hi all,
Thank you. I log into RESCUE MOD and after intialising all file Ubuntu asked me to select a partition to log.
My partitions are as follows:
/dev/discs/disc0/part1 - winnt
/dev/discs/disc1/part1 -fat32
/dev/discs/disc1/part2 -fat32
/dev/discs/disc1/part3 -/root
/dev/discs/disc1/part4 - /swap
/dev/discs/disc1/part5 -/fat32
I choose /dev/discs/disc1/part3
and get into shell command prompt
When I
fdisk -l
I got " can not open /proc/partitions"
GRUB " probing divices to guss bios drivers" and after some time "ERROR can not open terminal: bterm "
when i try
VI "can't write to viminfo file $HOME/.viminfo"

when i try to switch OS at startup screen
i got " GRUB GEOM ERROR" no command is functioning.

Here is menu.lst:

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-5-386
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hdd3 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.10-5-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.10-5-386 root=/dev/hdd3 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.10-5-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel memtest86+
root (hd1,2)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
savedefault
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1

-----------
This is device.map
(hd0) /dev/hda
(hd1) /dev/hdd
-------------------------------
this is fat_stage1_5's some Error Msg

GRUB loading, please wait...
internal error: the second sector of Stage 2 is unknown.
--------------
I hope you got some info. Is there any option like bootable floppy ? Should I wait for UBUNTU-5.10.
I don't want to install grub in MBR as I fear abt loosing my whole lot of data on winnt.
Thank you.