How to load linux in dual boot sys(grub not running)?
 

i have a dual boot system, XP and linux(redhat) each on a separate drive, because my xp had some problems, so i have to format it.....after formatting and setting uo a clean xp (drive c).....i found that the GRUB is no longer running....which i couldnt log into my linux....so may i know what to do in order to run the linux? thx :))

What happened when you re-installed Win XP is that the NTLDR wiped out your GRUB bootloader - presumably that was located on your C drive's MBR.
Try to re-install the GRUB bootloader using the Red Hat installation CD 1. There should be a repair facility (sorry if this all sounds rather vague, I currently have SuSE 9.1 installed, not Red Hat).
If there is no repair facility from which you can re-install the bootloader, try booting into Red Hat using either the RH installation CD or a Live CD like Knoppix or Morphix to access your Red Hat system.
If you can boot into the Red Hat system using the RH installation CD, you can then re-install the GRUB bootloader easily in the Control Center (or by running the necessary commands in Terminal if you know them and feel comfortable doing so) or by downloading and installing the RPM version of Webmin (unless you use Fedora Core 1, for which you'd need the tar.gz version of Webmin).
Webmin is a graphical program which is easy to use and allows you to administer many functions on your Linux system and can be downloaded from www.webmin.com

If you still have no luck getting into your Linux system, post again!

Terri

i have tried to run upgrade using redhat installation cd 1.....but error message saying that the swap was not initialized.....could it be those hda1,hda2,hda3 problems ?

Okay, I keep forgetting that the Red Hat installation CDs are not quite as flexible as the ones from SuSE, sorry.

Don't worry about the swap partition at the moment - even if it cannot be initialised, it's not too much of a drama since it contains no data.

However, I'm just a bit confused about your partitions - when you said you had WinXP and Red Hat on separate drives, are you referring to separate partitions or separate hard drives?
hda1, hda2 and hda3 would suggest to me that you have everything on one hard drive with hda1 as your Windows partition, and hda2 and hda3 set up as Red Hat with swap and a root directory/partition respectively.

Which Red Hat version are you using?

In any case I will spin up my installation disc for Red Hat (Fedora Core 1, actually, on my system, but it's pretty much the same...), and then post a more helpful reply for you.
For now my brain graves some sleep...

Terri

IM USING REDHAT 9 and a primary hardisk with few separated partitions in it..... intially windows xp was in drive c: , but after i formated and reinstalled it...the drive letter became g: .....

actually i manage to settle the boot loader problem by reinstalling EVERYTHING(linux)......this took up quite some time...so im just wondering if there is any other better solutions rather than this.... :)

What drive letters Windows assigns to partitions is irrelevant to GRUB.

The advice LittleAngel gave was correct, but you did not follow it. You tried to run an "upgrade" when what s/he said to do was use the "rescue" function-- which I'm almost certain exists on the RH install CD, but not sure if it will let you reinstall the bootloader, though you could always do that manually once the system has booted even to init 1 (text-based, root-only access for repair purposes).

The easiest thing to do would have been to boot to single-user mode, via RH CD1, or boot to a full Linux desktop using a LiveCD distro such as Knoppix.

You would then run cfdisk to view and confirm your partition table layout (since we're all clearly confused about that), and write down which partition is which.

You would then mount the RH /boot partition and edit (as root) either /boot/grub/menu.lst or /boot/grub/grub.conf (whichever one RH uses), to confirm that GRUB is still pointing to the correct partition for XP (since it's not clear if XP re-installed to the same partition or not; likely not since it changed drive letters, which it should not have done for a reinstall afaik). Save if necessary and exit the text editor.

You would then type grub in a root terminal (you already have one if booted into a single-user RH install; if using a Live CD, you'd have to open a terminal, su to root, mount the RH / partition and use the chroot command to make the RH partition the current root filesystem (rather than the CD's), so that when you run the grub shell as above, you're using the correct GRUB). Once in the RH grub shell, you would reinstall GRUB to the MBR as follows:

It might sound hard, but it's a lot easier than reinstalling 2 OSes and all the programs that you were using beforehand.

Provided you made a boot disk during the installation of Red Hat (always a good idea) you could have booted into Linux using the disk. Once in Linux it would have been a matter of going through the installation process for GRUB. See http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue64/kohli.html.

Bill