i have a dual boot system with rhl 7.1 dominant and windows me for compatability with family members and non-"computer geek" friends.

windows decided it needed to scandisk
that blewout the mbr.

the win me boot disk can't fix it. it doesn't see a valid fat16/fat32 partition. the win me cd doesn't see an os.

the linux cd and boot disks die trying to find the kernel and don't let me do anything.

at this point i'm stumped on how to fix the mbr.


i would GREATLY appreciate any help you can give me

Unlikely. MS tools ARE dumb, but not that
badly programmed. I'd assume you just
encountered a hardware fault.

And this confirms my thesis. A bootable CD doesn't
need a MBR on the HDD for anything. Did you play
with BIOS settings to make the box faster, or something
to that effect?



Cheers,
Tink

This sounds strange and ominous.Your profile says RedHat (7.1 and 9.0). So I am pretty sure RH9.0 has rescue mode, I don't know about 7.1?

Put in RH-9.0 CD#1 and boot into rescue mode. This should mount your linux partition somewhere, lets pretend it mounts it at /mnt/system, you can find out by typing mount, but I think it tells you. Anyway all you need to do is run lilo like this:
lilo -r /mnt/system

If rescue mode doesn't detect and mount the linux partition then probably you have a bad partition table. There are several threads here on fixing that. Recover Partition Thread
That should fix it.

re:
Unlikely. MS tools ARE dumb, but not that
badly programmed. I'd assume you just
encountered a hardware fault

it wasactually M$IE that caused the issue that made me feel scan disk was necessary when it crashed with a general protection fault.

re:
And this confirms my thesis. A bootable CD doesn't
need a MBR on the HDD for anything. Did you play
with BIOS settings to make the box faster, or something
to that effect?

linux cd i used was the source code, not binary. i was told by a friend i used the wrong one. source code booted and wanted to go to rescue mode (7.1).
i haven't touched the bios in about a month since i added a new cdrw since hte old one died.

re:
Your profile says RedHat (7.1 and 9.0). So I am pretty sure RH9.0 has rescue mode, I don't know about 7.1?

apparently it does.


however it all runs off the disk. i've neverhad to go thisfar into the guts of linux. i am not a guru. i do prefer it for it's stability but mostly just manuever around in it and use it for things like programming and the red hat 9 box is an internal server (home network)

i expected a mini kernel on the emergency boot disk so it would not need to find it...yetit complains about thatand then gives me a prompt it doesn't respond to


btw: i tired the recover and it gave me a shell and i tried
lilo -r /mnt/system
as well as trying to get grub to remake it, but in both it complained it couldn't find the program (lilo and grub)

i think it was trying to run off the image on the disk which isn't full

Working as a second level computer tech for windoze enviroment I might be able to get you into Win but can't gauntee linux. It sounds like your partition table may have been corrupted. Boot a win 98/me boot disk and do a fdisk /mbr. This will repair your MBR but boot you to windows. Then might trying running the Red Hat repair.

Part of the problem that caused your general Protection fault could be due to the fact your running ME. Now I am not fond of anything M$ made but that program is hands down the worse of all the os's. They basically took Win 98 and removed all its functionality and stability and called it a slim stable os. But it is not. If you have a 98 cd, go back to that. Windows ME is very unstable and you might see this again.

i tried that and it didn't find any fixed disks.


ironically, everything not backed up is on windoze. including some things i had recently been sent by a frien and asked to hold onto. so iwas planning on backing everything up yesterday. i can try again because it did find drives after attempting the linux recovery from the 7.1 disks. (floppy and dvd to floppy, dvd, cdrw, zip)

In my post I said I wasn't telling you to go to rescue mode and type lilo -r /mnt/system because I'm not sure where RedHat mounts partitions in rescue mode. I said that means that when you go to rescue mode it normally tells you where it is mounting your linux partitions, but if it doesn't then you can type mount and find out.

If you got this error:
bash: lilo: command not found
You were not in rescue mode if you got that error because I can just about guarantee you every rescue disk ever made for linux has lilo on it.

If the partition tables is borked fdisk /mbr will not fix it, that just fixes the bootsector not the partition table.
I said Then I posted a link to a thread that may help you restore your partition table, IF the partition table is trashed. I am not telling you it is, I'm just saying it COULD be.

i think i was a little quick to assume mbr. the bios had an issue with the hd. resetting that on to the cable and then going to the bios and getting the hd in it allows linux to function PERFECTLY.

however, when i access parts of the hd in windows through linux (linux sees windows in the /mnt directory) i get several print outs with the following information

this apppears several times
bread in fat_access

this appeared twice
directory 651 bad FAT
directory 652 bad FAT


there was a little more but i wasn't fast enough to write it all down. i figure at this point i probably need to go to the microsofe developers network boards and ask them how to fix the fat_access file, but figured i should at least let people know what happened

You might try scandisk again. Boot into safe mode first to reduce the risk of something else crashing scandisk.