Fwd: urgent pc wont load

[Phil Schaffner]

On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 13:14 -0500, jim lawrence wrote:
> On Sun, 09 Jan 2005 19:05:57 +0100, Alexander Dalloz <ad+lists at uni-x.org> wrote:
> > Am So, den 09.01.2005 schrieb jim lawrence um 18:57:
> > 
> > > -- it says  starting grub stage2...         then the cursor sits under
> > > neath that line
> > 
> > So it does not find stage 2.
> > 
> > > jim lawrence
> > 
> > What is the content of your grub.conf?
> > What does "fdisk -l" print out?
> > 
> > Alexander
> device      boot    start   end    blocks   id system 
> *************************************************************
> dev.hda1     *        1        1275                7   ntfs
> dev/hda2               1276  1288              83  linux    

This could be the problem.  Some old BIOSs can't access beyond cylinder
1024.  See http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html

I'd create a ~102MB /boot as /dev/hda1.  Should be able to change things
around with parted or Partition Magic, or start fresh and repartition
with fdisk or disk druid.

> dev.hda3               1289   2498              f     W95 Ext'd  (LBA)
> dev/hda5               1289   1416             82   Linux Swap
> dev/hda6               1417    2498            83   linux
> 
> my question is where is the boot partition i created, and where id hda4  ?

My guess is that the /boot partition is /dev/hda2.  / is on hda6.  You
have no hda4 since you created 2 primary partitions and hda3 as the
extended partition, as another poster has explained since I started this
then had to pick up a kid.  Could have gotten away with just 4 primary
partitions for this setup.

Is there only one disk?  Later message in this thread shows 

        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.9-1.667 ro root=label=/1 rhgb quiet

which would indicate another / (root) partition.

> if i need to reinstall  
> i have a win98 boot floppy   could i do 
> 
> fdisk /mbr   

If nothing else works, that - or XP recovery - should get your Windoze
back.

Phil