I was trying to format an SD card in my Windoze partition. I downloaded software from Panasonic to do this, and I had nothing but problems (and the 2 Gb SD card was never recognized). During that time, I tried a few reboots to see if there was any change, and damned if I didn't come up with Grub error 22. I guess the error was right. When I went into my machine with the Mepis Live CD, the partition which used to hold Mepis was now "unallocated space". I wondered if I would make it worse trying to use QParted to check the disk and I don't know what will happen if I ask for a reinstall of Grub. It might give me back my Windoze install and no Linux (since it isn't there), or it might do something awful. I suppose I could always fDisk and fix the MBR, but I want to put Mepis back on the same partition it used to reside on.

Think I should just reinstall it? I believe that will put me back where I was, but I have never seen anything like that before. I was in Windoze when all this happened. (I took a few hotfixes shortly before that, but rebooted successfully back to Doze, so Grub was working then.) Anyone ever seen a working partition disappear like that? I guess I'm glad my Doze is still there, it has most of my data.

The web is full of stories of people who had trouble formatting those damn SD cards (unless you have a device like a camera that uses one, and I don't). Anyone have any useful feedback? I am going to go watch some drunks play volleyball, but if anyone has any ideas that don't destroy more data, I would try anything. The old Mepis installation isn't crucial, but if I got it back I would think I made another leap in my newbism!!

I guess things are never as easy as they seem. I used QtParted to partition the hard drive (just made a 1Gb swap and the rest of 24+Gb as ext3) and went to install. It appeared that I could only see the swap file. I had heard that it is a good idea to reboot, so I did, and there was my ext3 partition on hda8 (is that a problem?).

Anyway, I went to install, and it said "Do you want to preserve data in home" (or something close). In case it would bring back my old install somewhat, I chose "Yes". Everything seemed to install way too fast, and it wouldn't boot afterward. I am getting a "non system disk error". So I did the Live CD again, and saw that Mepis was installed. I checked the menu.lst and it looks to be correct. But it apparently is NOT going to the grub menu or detecting that my hard drive is bootable. With the Live CD I was able to get to my Windows partition and copy my mp3 collection to a USB drive (that will save me tons of time copying from all my CD's again). But that means the data, at least on the Windows partitions, appears to be good. Guess I will try the MBR fix, then Grub fix and if that doesn't work, I guess I will install Mepis again and tell it NOT to preserve anything. Anyone got any better ideas? This sure isn't the worst thing that has ever happened (so far, anyway).

"Anyway, I went to install, and it said "Do you want to preserve data in home" (or something close). In case it would bring back my old install somewhat, I chose "Yes". Everything seemed to install way too fast, and it wouldn't boot afterward."

There is a bug in Mepis 6.5 where if you answer yes to that, you end up with a bad install.

It would appear to have more than a single bug. It completely screwed up X when I installed Gnome. I've used many distros but I've never seen any blunder like this.

Well....

When I first thought I lost the hard drive, I went to the BIOS and made CD my first boot choice. After the full install, I went back to basics, and in the BIOS I saw that "Hard disk 1" was selected rather than "Hard disk 0". I switched to "0" and then my new Mepis was there. I would swear that I remembered I use "0" and looked for it, but couldn't find it. Maybe it wasn't detected at that point...

The other possibility is that I messed it up when I went to change to boot to CD and if I had kept it on "0", I could have fixed that with the first reinstall of Grub. I can't be sure if I am just dumb (first option) or plain stupid (second option). But all is well on my dual boot Windoze/Mepis computer now...

DOH!!! DUH!!!!

Thanks. Nice of you to straighten that one out. Don't need any more bugs in things. My 6.5 final has been built up an upgrade at a time using apt-notify. I think it started as a beta 1. Now it says 6.5 but I did just do an upgrade so it may say 6.5.02. I would have to re-boot to find out. This built up version has been rock solid and bug-free. When I do re-boot it is usually to install a new version of MEPIS to test against the built up version I have been using. So far the built up version has been great. I have installed several betas and rc's to compare with this built up version and this is the one I use the most.No need to jump to a fresh install at this time. For me anyhow.

I thought you folks played Bean Bag Toss...

I play bean bag toss. And I make sure I call it that! One day at church, our pastor was talking up the big church picnic. He said, "I feel funny saying it, but we will have cornhole tonight"!!! He killed me with that!!!