I installed windows on a seperate partition, now my bootloader is gone..and I can no longer choose to boot into fedora core 2. How can I fix this! I know it's still installed and there. Thanks!!

I only installed windows so a piece of hardware would work.other wise i hate it! I've been on windows for 5 minutes, and can't stand it

me thinks your mbr has been overwritten by windows.

do you have a linux boot disk or a floppy rescue disk ?

check also if FC can be used as a rescue cd ? Can't help you with FC, try search of this forum to see how its done

You'll need a bootable linux CD so you can get access to your linux partitions and reinstall grub from there. Most distribution install CDs offer a way to get to a prompt so you can mess around, and some may even have an easy way to repair your bootloader. I feel your pain, btw. It sucks that Windows pays absolutely no attention to what's already on your machine when it installs.

A possible solution for the future - some BIOSes allow you to restrict access to the boot sector (to prevent viruses). If you enable this, you may be able to reinstall windows without letting it overwrite your MBR.

okay..

thanks for the help so far .

On my cd1..it has a rescue option. I did some searching on these forums, and found instructions on how to reinstall grub from the rescuse console. I did this...but once grub is installed...and I reboot...I get a prompt with

Grub >

And that's it. I really don't know what to do from there.

Help apreciated. Thanks.

See this page for a good intro: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4622

executive summary:
grub> root (hd0,4)
grub> kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda5
grub> boot

Once you get that to boot successfully, you should be able to reinstall grub from your existing config (the rescue CD appears to have put an unconfigured version on your MBR).

Nuts, I've confused your post with someone else's - I don't know what your root partition is, so the executive summary will only work if it's hda5.

I don't understand

Nothing I try works. I tried the kernel /vmlinuz thing..and it says vmlinuz is an invalid command or something. I'm not sure..but nothing works.

Fedora is installed on /dev/hda7 I believe btw.

I have written a tutorial here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=198155

what we are going to do with your help is re-install grub to mbr. Windows has only overwritten the mbr and not editted in any way your /boot/bgrub/menu.lst file.

Do you have a boot disk you can use to get to linux direct?

Otherwise can you use the rescue cd to mount your real /boot partition and your / partition and post your /boot/grub/menu.lst contents and your /etc/fstab contents

then we can make a start

aus9's tutorial looks very good, so read that if you can.

The 'kernel /vmlinuz' line needs to point to your installed kernel - use your rescue CD to find out what this is if /vmlinuz is not valid (/boot/vmlinuz may work if this is the case). Otherwise it'll be something very annoying to type, like vmlinuz-2.6.3-super-street-fighter-alpha.
In this case, it couldn't work because I gave you commands for hda5, not hda7.

new exec summary for hda7:
grub> root (hd0,6)
grub> kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7
grub> boot

I am flattered my your kind remarks, between the 2 of us he doesn't stand a chance (joke)

umm I have just made up a rough step by step for grub and rescue cd here
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=228496

since I notice that CroMagnon is a friendly neighbour across the Tasman I am off to the local dairy......choice heh?