Panic won't help anyone.
Have a look at the icons along the bottom - should be one that looks like a terminal/screen (maybe with a sea-shell on it). Just click that - good old command prompt for a windows user ....
Else click the big "K" icon bottom left - it's the "Start" button equivalent. Probably under "system tools" or somesuch - have a look around for something obvious.
If the command I gave you doesn't work, try "sudo fdisk -l".

If you have a dhcp router, knoppix should get an IP lease, so you can hit the web and post the output directly from there.
The fact knoppix boots at all indicates you problem is not grub, because they get booted o.k. before grub is even found.
As any bootable CD/DVD should.

My bios are set to cd player first... knoppix, mepis, slax, pclinnux, damn small linux all boot up of of the drive...
but my recovery disc does not get recognized...
I'm wondering why it reads and boots only linux cd/dvd's ?
and if they get booted before the grub is found...
why wouldn't my recovery disc?
I'll try what you said about getting into knoppix...
I've been where you said to look for I believe...
but
where would I write sudo fdisk -i
Thanks

Hello,

I had a dualboot laptop with XP and Suse. Using Partition magic I deleted the Suse partition and also resized the other partitions. Now when I reboot the computer it shows me the Grub and then error 22 and stops there. I used the XP CD to boot and reached the c:\windows prompt but when I type FIXMBR, I get this scary message that

"an invalid or nonstandard partition table signature is detected, you will be prompted whether you want to continue. If you are not having problems accessing your drives, you should not continue. Writing a new master boot record to your system partition could damage your partition tables and cause your partitions to become inaccessible."

I have four partitions and I can't afford to lose them. Any suggestion on what to do?

Thanks

khairkhoah,

I got this message too. Not having anything important on my machine, and therefore being prepared to reinstall from scratch if I had to, I threw caution to the wind and carried on. Everything went fine.

I'm fairly sure this warning just pops up when XP finds something it doesn't understand (e.g. GRUB) and/or to stop people mucking about with the MBR and partition tables unnecessarily.

You should be OK just to proceed with FIXMBR according to the prompts.

When you boot into Windows for the first time afterwards, you'll probably see a message saying that Windows has detected changes to the hard disk, and it'll run through Scandisk to get itself back in sync, then boot into Windows as normal.

Good luck!

J.

James,

Thanks for the tip. I used FIXMBR and apparently MBR was fixed but my problem is still not solved. Actually before trying FIXMBR I also tried to install WinXP (not a fresh intall but to fix the current installation) as was suggested by some other people. I don't think it was a good suggestion since Windows need to bootup for completing installation and would again get stuck in the GRUB issue so its a vicious cycle. A new installation is not the solutions unless one goes for formatting the hard drive and start from scratch. So after using FIXMBR, which I believe would have solved my problem if I would not have alreday selected the options of XP installation, I had to install XP again. But now after XP is installed I am getting the blue screen each time my computer starts. I tried Booting in Safe Mode but that didnt work. I tried XP installation again but same results. Now I am trying to install XP on the second partition as a fresh install to see if it would work. I am not sure what is the issue but I am in a fix at the moment.

khairkhoah,

This might be more of a question for a Microsoft specialist. Try the following forums:

www.windowsbbs.com
www.winguide.com/forums
forum.tweaks.com/forums

There's bound to be someone on one of them who knows XP in sufficient depth to figure out what's happened and advise you further.

Hope this helps,

J.

I just got free from grub....
Windows partition OK
Linux partition OK.
Someone told me to get into knoppix and open a command line...
I typed in SUDO TESTDISK...
AND AT THE 3RD OR 4TH CHOICE HIT THE BOX MARKED wRITEMBR.... Then selected yes (y) at tyhe question "are you sure"!
It cleaned things up in about 30 seconds.
Running great.
GL,
Stocky