I think there is a problem with my MBR.

First off.. GRUB doesn't load,
all it says is
GRUB Loading Stage1.5...

Grub is loading, please wait...

then I wait for hours and nothing happens.

I want to go into the XP recovery console, but as I put my XP CD inside the drive, all it says is "Windows is loading configuration files" or something to that manner, then a black screen.

How can I fix this in Linux? Right now, all I can do is go into SuSE 9.1 by booting off the SuSE 9.1 DVD, going into manual installation, and manually booting up the reiserfs partition.

Also, a link to a windows boot disk that I can create in LINUX would be greatly appreciated, as I can then use fdisk /mbr to see some stuff, or what is the linux equivalent of that command?

Thanks in advance !
k

sounds like you've toasted something, i wouldn't doubt it if it were the mbr.

not a huge problem though. do you know what brand your hard drive is? if you do, there are often utilities on the manufacturer's website available for download which can repair a damaged mbr (among other things). it is basically a low-level format (write drive to 0s), simple, but effective most of the time.

as for an equivilant command or utility, i don't know. can't help you there. good luck!

Boot into Linux and try this utility:
http://demonbane.org/ms-sys
usage:
ms-sys -m /dev/hda
change hda to where your MBR is if necessary
also make sure you backup current MBR onto a floppy disk in case somethnig happens

Thanks for that little program.. I tried it and it didn't work. "Missing Operating System".

The linux fdisk can read all the partitions, but when I boot off a win98SE floppy, fdisk says that my first partition is only 764 Mbytes, and that it's non DOS, 2nd is 10 gigs (my linux one), and 3rd is NTFS (5 gigs).

Now.. my NTFS windows partition was 70 gigs.. and linux can recognise that, but the DOS fdisk sees the swap (probably?) as the first partition, and sets the reiserfs partition as active.

Why wouldn't the DOS fdisk be able to read my main NTFS partition??

And why does this prevent me from booting off my XP CD?

I do know that the NTFS partition is intact and hasn't been wiped out (I mount it to /windows/C on linux, and have accessed it many times).

Ahhhh.. what do I do? I need XP back ...

Well.. I tried a fdisk /mbr, and that did nothing (on a win98 boot disk).

Right now, my primary goal is to get my winXP CD working, so I can run the commands fixboot and fixmbr through the recovery console.

I still can't boot off the XP CD though, all it does is inspect my hardware configuration, then give me a blank screen.

First try to reinstall GRUB.

Boot into Linux and then
grub-install /dev/hda

Then edit the menu.lst for the Windows partition
and try to boot.

Nothing... still can't get it to work.

What else can I try?

Well as last chance, take a look on:

http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/0...booting91.html

IT seems that you have the same problem in Windows and in Linux. Are you sure your graphics card is not a toast. Or have you changed some setting in BIOS - your problems seem like Operating System is trying to initiate your graphics card after what everything falls apart.

Yeah, great article! Good to know now where the buggy nature of the wrong partition tables comes from.

Thanks for this information Vlad-A.

Kind regards,
sbogus

THANK YOU

That ends my long Windows drought :P

Thank you everyone (especially sbogus) for all their input! This was indeed quite the learning experience.


I find that now that I have XP back.. I actually prefer linux ! Too bad there are still many things you can't do in linux..

I'm gonna partition 30 more GB to linux.. would it be a bad idea to install SuSE ENTIRELY (as in, every single package?)?

There would be a lot of conflicts, right?

Thanks again !!
Kind regards,
Kelvie