Can't install slackware - stuck in grub>
 

Hello everyone. I am having a problem installing slackware 9.1 on my laptop. I had redhat 9 installed, and followed the de-installation instructions to get rid of it. When I downloaded slackware and booted up the first cd (after changing the order of the bios to start the cd rom first) I got this message:

GRUB version .93 (636K lower / 128960K upper memory)
[Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible completions of a device/filename. ]

grub>



And that's it. I tried loading the second CD because I read somewhere in these forums that it is like a live CD, but my comp just won't load from a cd. I guess there's no environment or something. I'm stuck! Help!


Thanks.
Rachel

the last time somethng like that happened to me I took the quick and dirty approach by grabbing a win 98 cd and reformating the mbr. Im sure there are other ways to do it though. Maybe look into turning off any mbr virus detector in your bios? that is if it has any such settings...

and no, the second cd just has things like kde and gnome on it, i think the live cd is a seperate iso

Hi rzavarella, I get this if I delete my linux partition (I dual boot with Win2k) because the grub bootloader has altered the master boot record( well thats my understanding of it) are you dual booting? I fix this in 2k by booting from the cd, choosing repair an installation go the console option, then type two commands:

fixboot

fixmbr

hit the restart button and bob's your uncle, then i reinstall whichever distro tickles my fancy.

Hope this helps, even a little

MunCH

Thank you mipia for your help, but I don't have a win98 cd. I'm not sure where to go from here. I tried MunCH's suggestion and typed in fixboot and fixmbr after the grub> line but it said "unrecognized command." I can't boot from a cd so I'm stuck. Uggh.

Well anyway thanks for your help! I appreciate the replies.

Rachel

well, the easiest way is to get a bootdisk and fdisk /mbr

even you have a second computer or access you can download bootdisks from www.bootdisk.com and fix it that way.

I resinstalled RH 9 on the computer just to see if it would work. The installation went fine, so at least I know I didn't completely fry it.

I dug up an old windows 98 boot disk and tried to type in the fixboot command and I got this:


CDR101: Not ready reading drive D
Abort, Retry, Fail?


I tried the fixmbr command and got the same thing. I'm not sure what to do now. I visited the bootdisk.com site and I'm not sure if I download a slackware 9.1 boot disk, will that work? Or do I need a win98 bootdisk? Thanks for your replies!!

~Rachel
:newbie:

You should get the slackware 9.1 bootdistk. When you boot from it you will be able to boot slackware by mounting the Slackware 9.1 partition.

well, since the only program on the win98 bootdisk that will help is fdisk, try using the fdisk command with the /mbr switch ie: a:\fdisk /mbr from the place where the program exists ie: the a: drive (or whatever your floppy is).

fixmbr is a win xp/2000 console command and isn't present on a win98 bootdisk to my knowledge

I tried to use my win98 disk to fix the problem. I typed in the a:\>fdisk/mbr command and it just replied with a:\

I didn't know if that fixed the mbr, so I tried to boot up from the slackware 9.1 boot disk. I got the response:

Non-System disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready

Also, when I reinstalled RH9, I installed it with LILO instead of Grub. Not sure if that matters, but I figure any bit of info can help

when it returned the a:\ that means it "reformatted" your mbr. So that was successful at least. I know nothing about the slackware disk you downloaded. What I would do is use a live cd to re-install lilo in your mbr. There are quite a few threads posted on this subject here.

Thanks mia. I'll try the live cd.

you could just download grub and install it in slackware.

I have LILO now; when I reinstalled Redhat 9 I chose it instead of grub, now I'm stuck there instead of grub! It won't boot from CD and it won't read the boot floppy, it says "no operating system found"

It all sound as if your system is not trying fo boot from the CD but from the hard disk. Are you sure your bios is setup correctly to boot from CD? Or maybe your CD is not bootable, try getting a new one.

What kind of CD drive do you use? If it's usb then not all machines can boot from those.