hello, i am new here, just joined today. I have tried to search around for an answer to my problem but couldn't find it. So i have made this post. I this has been asked and answered before i apologize.
i am dual booting with Xp. I had Ubuntu dual booting wth Xp successfully before.I wiped Ubuntu off and installed PCLinusOS.
My problem is the failure of GRUB to load after installation. I cannot get any option to load any OS.I have reinstalled 6 times now and have followed the instructions in the guide on the live cd. the grub just says
"GRUB loading stage 1.5, please wait" and then nothing no error message or anything.I installed it to "/dev/hda"; that is the MBR.
when that failed repeatedly i looked around on the wiki site of PCLinux and tried a solution given there,so i reinstalled again and this time i installed the boot loader to the boot sector of the root partition, instead of the MBR ,and then edited the Windows Xp "boot.ini" file and effectively added the PCLinux option to the Windows Xp bootloader. That was successful and I now do get a choice of either Xp or Pclinux, but if i select PClinux, once gain the grub fails to load.This time there is a black screen with "GRUB" in white and a cursor that blinks, and blinks.....
I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the installed bootloader in PClinux i have.
I checked the md5sum before burning and also did a media check / CD check before running the live CD, all was fine.
Is there asolution??
i really hope to use PCLinux it is so highly rated everywhere, i would love to try it.
thanks for reading this long post.

GRUB is installed in two places, on the MBR and in /boot/grub/menu.lst. You may be missing the part in menu.lst or GRUB may still be pointing to the old Ubuntu menu.lst which no longer exists. I suggest that you boot a live CD. Then mount the PCLinux partition. Assuming that PCLinux is installed on hda2 and that you are using the ext3 file system then the commands to mount the PCLinux partition are:

mkdir /spare
mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /spare

Then you can examine menu.lst with the less command:
less /spare/boot/grub/menu.lst

If menu.lst does not exist then that is the problem. If menu.lst does exist then use the following commands to make sure that the MBR part of GRUB points to the correct menu.lst:

chroot /spare
grub-install

------------------
Steve Stites

Thanks for the reply
i will try it as soon as i get back from work
hope it works as i have spent so many hours on this now.
thanks again
Fouad

The PCLOS installation should have set up grub correctly--what option did you choose during installation?

To boot using the Windows loader, you have to put a grub file into the same folder with boot.ini The procedure for this is widely available, but I would start by finding "Saikee" here at LQ and looking in his signature.

Since Ubuntu uses grub as well, there is a high possibility that GRUB points to nothing, because
Ubuntu was removed. So as jailbait said you need to look at the /boot/grub/menu.lst file
this is the grub configuration. Make sure the GRUB points to the correct location.

Here is an example of my /boot/grub/menu.lst file


ok the line

this is the place where the grub configuration files reside. This notation is the only one that is
distinct from the rest youve seen in linux....this means hda or the MBR. grub uses (hdx,y)
where y is the partition number.

this line specifies two (2) things. The first part is the kernel and its location because
grub needs to know where it is at. and the second part "root" refers to the place where
the root directory is at.

hi guys thanks for the replies, i have not messed with anything yet. I booted with the liveCD.
the partition where PCLinux is installed is hda10. IT has a boot folder and the GRUB sub folder. The grub folder has a menu.lst. i am posting it's contents here, before i go on to anything else, maybe you guys will be able to see if there is a problem,
here is what it says
timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,9)/usr/share/gfxboot/themes/pclinuxos/boot/message
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,9)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/hda10 acpi=on resume=/dev/hda11 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,9)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,9)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=/dev/hda10 acpi=on resume=/dev/hda11
initrd (hd0,9)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,9)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=/dev/hda10 failsafe acpi=on resume=/dev/hda11
initrd (hd0,9)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title windows1
root (hd1,0)
map (0x81) (0x80)
map (0x80) (0x81)
makeactive
chainloader +1
This is after i reinstalled linux and loaded the bootloader to the hda10 partition(the linux "/" partition),so as to use the windows bootloader.
Thanks.

still nothing guys, i even installed it all over again after restoring the windows mbr by installing the mbr.bin file as mentioned on the pclinux wiki. That step restores the windows mcr and removes the installed grub. However i still cant log into linux although windows is now accessible.
I am really stumped by what is going on.

everything in the menu.lst file seems to be good...
why dont you try what jailbait proposes....
i just talked about the menu.lst file so you could understand
what was going on....
but boot from a live CD and do as he says....
the most fundamental part is

grub-install

this will install the GRUB in the MBR.... and will overright the one
that was there before... So follow exactly what he says...and let us
know if you have any issues or dificulties.
so please try what he proposed out ...and then lets continue on from there.

Hi, i have tried what jailbait said and the process stopped at the following step:

[root@dhcppc0 root]# chroot /spare
chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': No such file or directory


the grub-install command asks me to specify a device and when i say /dev/hda it tells me to specify a root directory, at which point my extremely limited linux CLI skills are defeated.
thanks for bearing with me
Fouad