AH!! I need windows back :(
 

I am a pure linux newbie :(

Anyway, I have 2 HD's and previously had XP installed on the first one.

Popped in RH 9.0 and used the auto-format feature (on the second HD) and it worked good 'in all... used GRUB as the boot loader.

Anyway, when I would reboot the loader showed RH and 'dos' like I assumed was normal.

Before even checking to see if windows still booted (I didn't see why it wouldn't) I installed the new kernel for RH.

Anyway, it shows two different kernels in the boot loader + 'dos'.

When I click on dos, it just said booting 'dos', then something like hd0,0 chainloader.

And thats like all... it just stops cold.

Linux loads fine, but there are important things still on my windows drive...





Any help would be appreciated.. thanks in advance.

And excuse my newbieness :( But i figured this was the right place to go to.

Re: AH!! I need windows back :(
 

Newbie-ness need not be excused. We are all newbies at one time or another.

I admit that I am not a Windows XP experienced person. BUT, I found a couple of links that might help you. I found these with a google search (what else) on the terms ""windows xp" dual boot red hat linux howto"

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html
http://www.overclockersclub.com/guid..._fedora_xp.php

Perhaps these or other pages can provide you the information you need to get back to your windows boot.

Also, it would be helpful if we could see your grub configuration file.

type:
vim /boot/grub/grub.conf

at a terminal and it should display some text. If you could copy and paste that here, that might help some too. :)

Also I've heard that making the HD with grub on it master can sometimes solve a problem, but I wouldn't try that now because you would have to make a few configuration changes.

Thanks for the quick response guys :).


Here's the config.

# grub.conf generated by anaconda
#
# Note that you do not have to rerun grub after making changes to this file
# NOTICE: You have a /boot partition. This means that
# all kernel and initrd paths are relative to /boot/, eg.
# root (hd1,0)
# kernel /vmlinuz-version ro root=/dev/hdc2
# initrd /initrd-version.img
#boot=/dev/hda
default=0
timeout=10
splashimage=(hd1,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-31.9)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-31.9 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-31.9.img
title Red Hat Linux (2.4.20-6)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.20-6 ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi
initrd /initrd-2.4.20-6.img
title DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Well I can think of a few things to try. Your grub.conf file looks ok to me, so maybe reinstalling grub would work.

become root:
su

setup grub:
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

It's worth a shot.

Re: AH!! I need windows back :(
 

If by "important things" you mean documents or other files you can mount the windows drive and read/copy them with RH running


Just a thought,
mark

Reinstalled GRUB. Didn't work..


Can't mount windows drive.
XP = NTFS

become root and try:

/sbin/fdisk /dev/hda

press the letter 'p' and enter, and paste the output here.

Redhat 9 doesn't include NTFS support by default
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/rpm/index.html

As for the bootloader issue, here's what I recommend you do:

1. Back up current MBR to another file by using "dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr.bin bs=512 count=1" and copy mbr.bin into a floppy disk( make sure it's FAT format).

2. Boot with WinXP CDROM into the recovery console, and do a "fixmbr", if its successful it should load Windows directly when you reboot.

3.Copy mbr.bin to c:\ from the floppy, and add this to c:\boot.ini(hidden by default):
reboot and see if you're able to boot Redhat by selecting it from the boot menu.

Ah, that's an interesting trick. I'll remember that one :D

I have a similar problem.

I installed Linux on my notebook to try it, but it's much too slow to enjoy it. So I want to reinstall the Windows which was there before. It's not possible to directly change the BIOS settings while booting, you need a Windows tool from the manufacturer's web site to change the boot order. Before installing Linux, I changed the order from hd-floppy-cd to floppy-cd-hd, but the setting wasn't kept (don't know why..), so I can only boot from the hd.

How can I persuade GRUB to boot from the Windows 98 CD?

CD-ROM: hdc

Your bios still needs to support booting from CD-ROM for this to work, but looks like your does so give this a shot:

Download this
put it in your /boot and add this to your /boot/grub/grub.conf (or men.lst)
If you have a separate boot partiton remove "/boot" from the path.
This bootsector file will first try to boot from the floppy, then the cdrom, so make sure you have nothing inserted in your fdd.

Ok... I attempted to do this; however, once I did the "fixmbr" number, I tried to copy mbr.bin to c:\ only, it did not want to read the disk. Windows will not start. Linux will not start.

I have no idea what to do right now. This is a challenge I have never had to face. Any help anybody can give, I would greatly appreciate.

Well you need to give specific details on your problem, as I doubt these instructions from my previous post is going to work for everyone.

well, what i could notice here is that the DOS filesystem is set to be searched at (hd0,0) and that's the first hdisk mbr, and i thing DOS is actually located in (hd0,1) first data part of the first HD.. but now you say that you cant even boot linux, what you can do is at the grub screen, at the command prompt (i dont remember the command to get there) you type:

rootnoverify (hd0,1) (enter)
chainloader +1 (enter)

and that should get you to boot windows... i think that the commands are correct, as soon as i reboot my system i will re-check, and post any corrections here, but what you should do is change the grub.conf or lilo.conf under
itle DOS
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
to
rootnoverify (hd0,1)

.... please anyone let me know if im wrong... well thankz... hope it helps

grub starts counting disks AND partitions at 0, so (hd0,0) is correct, to specify the wholedisk(ie the mbr) you just remove the partition so its (hd0).

Everything that talon posted, would be true in my case, with minor differences. 40 gb drive as opposed to 15.

Talon contacted me on another post because we were having exactly the same issue.

K what error message, if any, do you get when you boot your machine now?

how about ' #modprobe ntfs ' and mount win-stuff ' mount -t ntfs /dev/hd?? /win-stuff ?

egag

Your first hint did it.

It worked fine, the computer accepted a DOS bootdisk and the rest was the usual way. A really good feeling to see the DOS command prompt, a familiar environment. ;)

Thanks for your efforts.

I had experienced the same prob
 

Well dude all you have to do is try editing the grub config file by pressing e when you get the boot prompt and then try to make it hd1,0 instead of hd0 it worked for me...
cheers
Pavan.M.V. ( pony85)