"SuperBIOS" keeps overwriting grub (was Making Fedora Boot CD)

[Jim Cornette]

Coy Scott wrote:
> I partitioned the hard drive of my Gateway GT5224 PC so that I could 
> make it a dual boot system.  It came with Windows XP.  I installed 
> Fedora Core 6.  However, I can't boot Fedora.
> 
> Whenever I installed GRUB on the master boot record (MBR) and then 
> rebooted windows XP, the software detected "file corruption" and forced 
> a reinstallation of Windows XP.  This overwrote the MBR, removing GRUB 
> and making it impossible to boot Fedora.
> 
> So, I tried the only other installation option.  I had the installation 
> program install GRUB on first sector of the boot partition (/dev/sda6).  
> However, when I reboot the computer, GRUB never gets to run because 
> Windows XP is using the MBR.
> 
> I've looked through a couple of books, and the GRUB documentation on the 
> "gnu.org" website.  But, I haven't found a solution.
> 
> Can someone point me to documentation of how to make a boot CD?  Can I 
> put GRUB on a bootable CD that will allow me to boot Windows XP or 
> Fedora Core 6?  Do you have another suggestion?  Thank you.
> 
> In case it is helpful, here are the partitions that Fedora should be 
> able to access:
> 
> Mount Point: /boot
> Device: sda6
> Start: 24273
> End: 24285
> Size: 101 M
> Type: ext3
> 
> Mount Point: /
> Device: LVLogVol00
> Start: ?
> End: ?
> Size: 28928 M
> Type: ext3
> 
> Mount Point: /shared
> Device: sda5
> Start: 24535
> End: 26453
> Size 15053 M
> Type: vfat
> 
> Coy Scott
> 
> 

It sounds like you have a BIOS that is supposed to detect problems with 
the MBR and automagically fix the problem for you. You might try to go 
into BIOS and disable that "feature".

I believe Mike mentioned a problem like this before and uses the 
boot.ini approach to get grub to load from winNT.


As far as making a boot disk, you should read the help files available 
on the net about how to make a CD to boot your system with. After you 
get the commands for making a boot -iso with mkbootdisk you can boot 
into rescue mode, chroot /mnt/sysimage followed by the needed options 
needed to generate an iso file. I am guessing mkbootdisk kernelversion 
-iso /tmp/boot.iso or similar commands would have to be performed to 
create the image. Afterwards, you would need to burn the image to disk.


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