no boot XP after FC4

[Grant Allan]

> On Thu, October 20, 2005 12:53 pm, Grant Allan said:
>> hi,
>>
>> just installed FC4 into empty partition on same drive as WindowsXP
>> (disk1).  i'm aiming for dual-boot using NTLDR menu.
>>
>> i think i messed something up, cos now during reboot i get told that
>> NTLDR
>> can't be found.  strange thing is, when i boot from SystemRecoveryCD,
>> and
>> then choose the option to boot from "disk1", WindowsXP boots fine (and
>> so
>> obviously NTLDR is there after all).
>
> No, the bootstrap isn't there but the partition is still active. It may
> have been overwritten or corrupted by the FC4 install. I think the command
> may still be fdisk /mbr which will re-write the NTLDR bootstrap.
>
>>
>> i'm confused - does this mean that my BIOS is not looking at my disk1
>> during the boot sequence any more?  (hope not, cos my BIOS menu is in
>> japanese, and i can't read it.)  or maybe my MBR has gotten minced?
>
> BIOS has to see the drive else booting wouldn't work at all regardless of
> how you tried. The OS depends on the BIOS to tell it where to find the
> hardware, but doesn't control what's on the hardware.

new info, same but different: i have re-installed linux.  this time during
the installation, i asked it to use GRUB, and put it at the front of
/dev/hda1.  now i have the following behaviour:
  reboot (CD & floppy drive empty) - message that NTLDR is missing
  reboot with SystemRescueCD, then typing "disk1" to boot from the active
partition of my first hard drive - GRUB starts OK
  reboot with WinXP-generated boot floppy - windowsXP starts OK

Q1: i'm still not convinced that the hard-drive hasn't disappeared from
the boot sequence in my BIOS.  can someone convince me further?  i'd love
to be sure that my BIOS is fine.  i know that the BIOS can see the hard
drive.  but i'm wondering if my hard-drive has somehow been removed from
the where-to-look-for-bootable-media list.

Q2: i think it's very strange that i have a message about NTLDR being
missing when GRUB seems to come up ok when booting from the active
partition of disk1.  since GRUB seems happy enough to do it's stuff on
that partition, what could it possibly be that's trying to locate NTLDR
when booting CD-less?

Q3: help please <- small squeaky voice

thanks,
grant