Well I'll start by saying, I should have just been happy with the way my GRUB worked in the first place and not screwed with it . That's what I'd say to anybody who had the problems I had initially.
OK this is a very long story... here goes.


I booted up my computer one day (I had been using WinXP the previous day) and I get the GRUB Error 21 in Loading Stage 1.5. After reading countless forum posts on linuxhelp.org I found that the problem was that Windows, being very picky, messes with GRUB's boot record whenever you boot XP up (dang you Bill Gates...). I read that the best way to fix this is to install GRUB on the HD with the Copy of windows you are trying to boot, instead of the linux HD. Well,lucky for me (psh, yeah right), this proved to be wrong in my situation. What this actually caused the WidnwosXP to do was to say NTDLR is missing and not boot at all, whenever i tried to boot it from GRUB, or anywhere else for that matter. So, I read various web sites about how to fix this and I find that you just pop in your XP install disk, go to recovery console, and copy the ntldr and ntdetect.com files over to your Windows HD from the recover CD. Something i forgot to state earlier was that Linux also wouldnt mount the XP partition, even though I had mounted it many times before. It gets wierder now. I use the "map" command in the recovery console to find out what my drives letter names were. I see all of my drives, but the drive with Windows XP on was not labeled NTFS *loud gasps from the crowd*. Maybe it would help explain my situation if i draw out the way the map command displays itself:

X:--------------NTFS------------\device\harddrive1\partition1
B:--------------FAT32-----------\device\harddrive1\partition2

In my situation, X: (it was D: in my case) would not have the NTFS label beside it (actually, it had no label beside it). Some of you may ask the question "Are you sure that this is the right drive that you were looking at?". In reply: yes, i used the dir command to display the files in the D: drive and they matched that of my copy of windows (in other words, i looked at the drive, and recognized the files).
So I tried to copy the ntldr and ntdetect.com files to the drive anyway, but it said that this was not possible for whatever reason. So what i did next was copy the files to all of the other drives labeled with an NTFS in hope that this might fix my problem. Well, of course, it didn't. Now whenever i boot the screen flashes with something about a boot.ini and that its corrupt so its going to boot from the C: drive now and then it says that something like "hal.dll" is missing from the system32 directory on the C: drive. I'm completely lost. If anybody has any ideas at all, even if ou think they are stupid, please post.

Thanks
+Sygnus X1

Guess what, I had the same thing. But I managed to copy NTLDR ok, then when it came to boot it ran ckdsk (or what ever its called) and basically told me every file on the drive was corrupt, wrong or missing. In the end I decided my file system was screwed - why linux won't mount it, win cd thinks it isn't NTFS - and the only remedy was to take out the drive and put it as a slave in another XP/2000/ME system to see if you can recover any data then reinstall windows - you will need to format the drive to do this.
Other option worth trying is to use the XP cd to try and re-install / recover / fix current xp install, not sure if it will work but worth a shot.

Yeah, thanks for the reply.
All i did was install GRUB. How could GRUB have messed up the drive? It doesn't make sense that my whole drive would some how be screwed. And why is it that the drive is no longer labeled NTFS (did you have this problem too?)?

Sygnus X1,

There are a few commands you can issue from the Windows recovery console. For more information you can check this knowledge base site http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058/EN-US/.

I solved a problem recently where I screwed over the drive with my MBR by deleting the partition and reformatting it. Thankfully I had the main WINDOWS folder on another drive and partition.

I dont recall the procedure completely but i know that i used a combination of the FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands as well as having to copy the ntldr and ntdetect.com files off the CD. By the sounds of it you might be part way there.

As for the NTFS label not being displayed. I would have though that information would be kept in the File Allocation Table (FAT) but I am not sure if NTFS uses such a thing. I know that FAT16 and FAT32 systems do. Of coure, and lets hope, that the filesystem information is actually stored in the boot sector for NTFS drives and thus will be restored if you play around in the recovery console.

My suggestion would be to do things in this order:
FIXBOOT
FIXMBR
Copy NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from [CD-ROM]:\i386 to [root]:\

Good Luck!!

Thanks, ill try that.
Something else happened latly whith the drive...
i took it out and put it in my other comp and it says that its not formated . so i think the only way out is to format it. but if anybody thinks they might know another way to restore it to ntfs, plase say so.

Syngnus X1,

I don't have time to re-read your initial post but have you tried to mount the drive under Linux? If you can do that at least you can attempt to back up some of your important files. Even though the recovery console does not recognise the drive as NTFS, linux might still be willing to mount the drive as NTFS and potentially read some if not all of the partition (some of it might be corrupt).

mount /dev/hdc2 /mnt/windows -t ntfs -o uid=<user>,gid=<user>

making sure you replace <user> with your username. This will allow you full access to the Windows partition, regardless of Windows user access restrictions. You should also replace the 'hdc2' with the appropriate partition.

Thanks adriaanbw

Yes, I have tried to mount the drive in linux and its not possible (acccording to linux) i get this error:
adriaanbw: if you do have time, you might want to read my original post it might let you know about my situation better.

Sygnus X1,

Yeh sorry about that. I didn't have time to re-read last night but now I see you can't do that anymore.

Now I am pretty sure you didn't mention doing any kind of checkdisk. Try doing something like that from the recovery console. The information at the link i provided might give some insight into this. I know there is a command called 'SFC' with options like '/SCANNOW' that might run from the recovery console and might fix the problem. However, that command might only fix system files that are corrupt and missing.

You got nothing to lose at this point, and I think failing that, I would look around for some file recovery software if there is stuff you would like to get back (if it is at all possible). Then reformat and start over...

We have done all we can to save it, but it might be time to call it....

thx ill try that