GRUB error 15, won't load
Hey,
I posted a similar thread on the Arch forums, but haven't got any answers since yesterday, so I figured it couldn't hurt to post here too. I had Linux Mint dual booting fine with Windows XP, but hadn't used it in a long time and wanted to try Arch. I deleted Mint's partitions and made new ones for Arch, installed it (successfully, as far as I know), rebooted and... Code:
GRUB Loading stage1.5. I have two HDs, one IDE and one SATA (where both OSs are installed). The IDE is sda, SATA sdb. sdb is divided in sdb1, which is Windows, sdb2, which is the boot partition, sdb3 - swap, sdb5 - root, and sdb6 - home. device.map: Code:
(fd0) /dev/fd0 Code:
/dev/sda1: LABEL="MAGUS" UUID="43DC-06FF" TYPE="vfat" Code:
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes Code:
# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader I'm hesitant to try to install GRUB in the MBR as the Arch dual boot guide explicitly advises to install it in /boot. What should I do? I have very little experience with Linux, so any help is appreciated. Thanks. |
How weird - it seems my HDs are switching positions. I just ran fdisk and blkid again and the SATA came identified as sda, while it used to be sdb. Perhaps this is related to the GRUB problem?
(I guess it's the reason why it found menu.lst in (hd0,1)) |
If you change by accident the drive order during install sda and sdb does not change .
But what do change is that the drive that where the first drive at install time become hd0 |
You will have to write the MBR - it looks like the grub from Mint is still there, and can't find its stage files (because you deleted them :p ).
This looks like a better entry to follow - I've used similar on Arch for years. |
Okay, some progress :)
I ran fixmbr with WinXP's Recovery Console. The first time I rebooted, GRUB seemed to be working just fine! I logged in to Windows XP (had to do some stuff on the Internet, didn't have time to set Arch up), and later shut the computer down and went to bed. Today I woke up and, to my disappointment, GRUB is now just skipped and Windows boots up automatically. I tried reinstalling GRUB with setup (hd0,1), but that did no good. Then I reinstalled Arch, still no luck. Tried this, but failed at the second umount -a because it said /mnt was busy or something to this effect. Should I install GRUB in the MBR, despite what the Arch wiki advises? Or what should I do? Thanks. |
Re-install grub.
Yea, fixmbr deletes grub so you will have to re-install it.
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Well, I'm confused. What purpose does the boot partition serve, then, if GRUB is on the MBR?
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Booting.
Same as when windows is installed, only windows does not easily boot linux.
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The MBR contains a small amount (a few hundred bytes) of code (stage1) that the BIOS executes on power-on. Its job is to find the code that does the real work - in grub that is located in /boot, which may (but doesn't need to) be a separate partition. In windows (prior to vista) ntldr does the work of finding boot.ini and doing the actual boot function.
The stage1 code is very limited due to its size constraints - grub and lilo are somewhat more flexible than the windows code, but constrained none-the-less. On modern equipment the requirement for a separate /boot partition has all but disappeared. |
syg00 won't there need to be something for bios to point to (mbr to operating system). I guess if everyone ran virtual machine it might make it easier.
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The BIOS just cycles through the disks it knows about until it finds a sector zero with code in it - then it just loads the code and executes it. If all the disks have no code it gives up and complains. That's why you can have XP code on one disk and grub/lilo on another and flip-flop the BIOS entries to boot either if you want.
Can lead to unexpected errors if the first disk MBR has been blank for a while and gets re-written at some later stage - or a new disk changes the order in the BIOS. |
I found what was wrong - every time I boot into Windows, it resets my boot partition from sdb2 to sdb1, so if I want to go back to Linux (or just use GRUB) I have to run cfdisk from a LiveCD... it's quite annoying. What could be causing this and how can I fix it?
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