MBR Messed Up; How to use rescue?

KarlT · 12-23-2003, 02:41 PM

SuSE 9. When I attempted to make emergency boot floppy disk and rescue disk, the rescue disk failed at the 90% point of verification each time, so I don't have them, and I am not sure what would be on them.

However, something has happened to my MBR on the drive which has both Win98SE and SuSE linux 9.0 If I just attempt to boot up, it quickly goes to "GRUB" and there is no prompt there; I cannot enter anything at the GRUB line.

If I put the CD1 in the drive and start the computer, I have the option of "rescue system" or various installs (which I don't want to redo if possible). The rescue system goes just so far, and then I get "rescue login" prompt. No matter what I enter there (including OK, system or user passwords, the next line comes up and says "password". No matter whether I enter the root system password or the user password, it says "incorrect password" and goes back to the "login" prompt. What am I supposed to enter there? Ie., what does it want for "rescue login"?

Now what can I do in this case? I always thought if GRUB got messed up, you had a prompt there that you could enter stuff and boot into the Linux partition and fix the MBR from there, but that is not working here because the GRUB that comes up has no blinking curser and simply does not respond to anything I enter.

Is there any option other than to do a complete reinstall of the Linux to get the dual boot MBR fixed?

Thanks.

Karl

moonloader · 12-23-2003, 02:58 PM

I think with suse cd 1 you can install lilo and then you can configure grup loader from kde control center as far as I remember when you reinstall lilo,it configures automatically

KarlT · 12-23-2003, 03:14 PM

"which one controls,you or your OS???" Apparently my OS :-( ; I am sure not in control!

Not sure what you mean. When I boot up normally, I get a screen which gives me the option of Linux (defult) or by using arrow key I can go down to Windows, safe start and something else.

But I can't get there, if I boot up normally, I get black with white "GRUB". If I put Linux CD in, I have option of install or repair, but as I said above, when I use "repair" it stalls at "rescue login" which I cannot get beyond . . . !

Karl