cannot reinstall grub after windows xp messes up partitions
Paul Howarth
paul at city-fan.org
Sun Apr 3 10:12:43 UTC 2005
On Sat, 2005-04-02 at 18:19 -0800, Evan White wrote:
> I'm running a Windows XP / FC3 dual-boot system on a
> Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop and it was running fine.
> Here's the partitions from fdisk:
>
> device start end Blocks Id System
> /dev/sda1 1 4462 35840983 7 HPFS/NTFS
> /dev/sda2 4463 8287 30724312 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
> /dev/sda3 8288 8300 104422 93 Amoeba
> /dev/sda4 8301 12161 31013482 8e Linux LVM
> /dev/sda5 4463 8287 30724281 b W95 FAT32
>
> Inside the LVM, there is a 2 GB Swap and the rest is
> /.
>
> I noticed that the Linux parition showed up in Windows
> as F: and was concerned that Windows would somehow
> corrupt the partition if it was mounted, so I looked
> for ways to hide that partition from Windows. I ended
> up changing my grub.conf file to include this line in
> the Windows section: hide (hd0,2)
>
> In hindsight, perhaps it should have been (hd0,3).
>
> Anyways, upon reboot into Windows, I could tell that
> Windows did something before I logging me in. It went
> to that light blue screen that it uses for scandisk
> for about 2 seconds, then it logged me in. The F:
> drive was still visible, and when I rebooted, I got
> the following error:
>
> GRUB Loading stage1.5
>
> GRUB loading, please wait...
> Error 17
>
>
> Well I've seen this before, so I booted to my FC3 disk
> and typed "linux rescue" then "chroot /mnt/sysimage".
> I checked my grub.conf, which reads:
>
> title Fedora Core (2.6.10-1.770_FC3)
>
>
> Then I ran "grub-install /dev/sda" and got this:
>
> The file /boot/grub/stage1 was not read correctly.
>
> I didn't know what that was all about, but after
> looking around, I found people suggesting the
> following:
>
> #>grub
> grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
>
> To which I received:
>
> Error 15: File not found
>
> I am, however, about to browse to /boot/grub/ and I
> can see the stage1 file. But for some reason grub
> can't find it. Someone suggested using grub.img, but
> I don't have a floppy drive. I do, however, have
> network/internet access still enable thru FC3 rescue
> mode.
>
> Questions:
>
> Firstly, is the hide command the best way to keep
> Windows away from the Linux partition? What is the
> best way?
>
> Secondly, how do I reinstall grub successfully?
My guess is that the partition /dev/sda3 is actually your Linux /boot
partition, since it's about the right size and you have no other grub-
readable Linux partitions. I would use fdisk and change the partition
type to "Linux" instead of "Amoeba". Grub might then be happier to look
there for /grub/stage1 (the leading /boot is not required since you have
a separate /boot partition).
As for hiding the Linux partition(s) from Windows, can't you use "Disk
Management" and tell Windows not to assign a drive letter to that
partition?
Paul.
--
Paul Howarth <paul at city-fan.org>
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