Dual-Boot/XP Crash

[Nigel Wade]

Gary Waters wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I changed my motherboard, CPU, and Videocard. I previously posted my
> intentions and queried as to whether or not Fedora would survive the
> transition, which it did....with flying colors. However, windows XP did
> NOT. I'm now looking to repair or reinstall XP so my daughter won't
> drive me nuts over not being able to play her games.
> 
> Could somebody point me to a FAQ on how to do this and restore grub? The
> man pages are somewhat vague. I really don't want to lose this fedora
> installation. I spent a lot of time fine-tuning it. I did some googling
> on the matter, but I would feel much more secure with whatever
> suggestions this list has to offer. Thanks.
> 
> Gary
> 
> 

If Windows overwrites your MBR you can fix it fairly easily. Boot from the 
FC1 CD in rescue mode. This mounts your root partition at /mnt/sysimage, so run
# chroot /mnt/sysimage
to make it the root filesystem. Then run

# grub-install /dev/hda
(this assumes that GRUB is to be installed in the MBR of the primary master 
disk, if not you'll need a different command).

As to fixing XP, that's another issue and one which doesn't really belong 
here. The only advice which should appear in this list for fixing XP is to 
run mke2fs /dev/hda1 which will cure all problems with XP (but I won't 
because that wouldn't be nice). Basically, you need to boot into safe mode 
and delete all devices related to the changed hardware - graphics card, IDE, 
USB etc. Then reboot and let XP detect the new hardware. Make sure you 
backup any XP files you need to keep as this process doesn't always work, 
changing the MB sometimes requires a re-installation of XP.

-- 
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
             University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555