System hangs after FC5 installation

aabfm · 06-28-2006, 03:17 PM

Hi,
I need serious HELP!

My system has WinXP on the primary partition, and some drives defined on the extended one.
Also I had a 20GB of unused space which I used to install FC5.
So far so good, unless when it asked me to reboot and after that it just hangs after the POST screen with a 'GRUB' and a blinking cursor at the bottom of the screen.

I installed choosing the option to use the 'unused space of the disk'.
Furthermore, all of my work docs are here, I really need to get it back to work, preferently with both OSs.

Thanks in advance!

pljvaldez · 06-28-2006, 03:27 PM

http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?t=144294

It sounds like Fedora didn't create the grub menu.lst correctly. The above thread has steps you can take to figure out how to repair the menu.lst. Particularly look at A2, A6, and A7.

If you just want to boot windows, follow C1 and just hit enter after each line.

Code:

root (hd0,0) --> Windows exists here
chainloader +1  --> Boot NTLDR
makeactive
boot  --> Go!

If you have any specific questions about the process come back and we'll help some more.

aabfm · 06-29-2006, 11:06 AM

When I tried

find /boot/grub/menu.lst

the result was

find: /boot/grub: No such file or directory

Also the only way to be able to write something is through the RescueCD.
However I manged to find the menu.lst in this path

/mnt/sysimage/boot/grub

I opened the menu.lst and it has both OSs entries there.

pljvaldez · 06-29-2006, 11:22 AM

Do you know what drive /mnt/sysimage is? Try checking the /etc/fstab. Then you can just do A7 to set it up into the MBR (change root (hd0,5) to the right partition). You need to check and make sure all the partitions in grub are pointing to the right place.

Can you post that menu.lst here?

Hitboxx · 06-29-2006, 11:23 AM

Post its contents

aabfm · 06-29-2006, 01:10 PM

Got the solution!!!

I entered

chroot /mnt/sysimage

then

mkdir /boot/grub
grub-install /dev/hda

afterwards I copied the content of the first menu.lst into the new one
but this time I got the Error 18 once it started to boot.
According to the info on the net, the Error 18 has something to do with the cylinders and the BIOS - EUREKA!!!! (That's the reason why I had almost 30GB unused at the end of the HD, the BIOS was just detecting the first 130GB instead of the whole disk - 160GB!...)
BIOS update -> Restart -> and at last IT WORKS!!!!

Thanks for everything!!!
Precious tips!!!