After weeks of fighting with Linux to recognise my Sagem Fast 800 modem, I had finally given up and reverted back to Windows. I reinstalled my Windows bootloader and went back to Windows XP.

There is one last small fix that I want to try before I put my experiences with Linux behind me forever. I hate the thought of that though, as I love the Gnome destop environment, but I've spent countless hours trying to get Fedora or Suse to pick up my Sagem modem which has the Eagle chipset that Linux doesnt like for some reason. I've tried every patch under the sun and hit a blank wall every time.

I know that my grub bootloader is at hda0,2. Can I force Linux to load from my CD without overwriting my windows bootloader again?
My windows recovery files are on the hard drive, so everytime I take off Grub, I have to reinstall Windows files again as I dont have a recovery disc which gives me a command prompt where I can repair the bootloader from.

Does anyone know why Linux doesnt like USB modems? I know that Windows isnt trouble free, but has picked up every modem I have installed for years without any problem. i'm beginning to appreciate Windows again

thanks,
tim

I did of course mean to boot from ny hard drive without reinstalling grub

thanks,
tim

You can create a Grub Floppy boot disk.

There are a number of articles on this ... here is one you can look at -> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...highlight=grub

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
Last night when I loaded Suse 10.1 system recovery, I managed to boot the suse without reinstalling the grub, but I don't remember how I did this. Whatever I did launched a mini-grub interface which allowed me to choose which os system I booted to. Does anyone out there know how on earth i managed this?????

tim

Maybe you're still around. I had kind of the same problem. The screen you got while using the install disk to repair shows up as an "installation error" scrreen. You hit abort w/the disk in and push multiple-random keys at the same time {deftly smash the keyboard with your hand before the abort install has a chance to reboot} up pops a red rectange w/an OK button in the middle saying "there was an error in the installation process", hit OK, and a screen pops up with and option to "Boot installed syatem".

Better yet is a file you can burn to CD that is bootable -- search for "Super Grub Disk". It's only 35MB. It boots and gives you an option to automatically boot into Linux. It works sweetly.