I'm a newby to this group. But I've had numerous problems with GRUB, trying to install Suse, Ubuntu, Knoppix all to no avail. However, I suspect the problem lies not so much with GRUB, but with code in the MBR.
As far as I can tell, there's an MBR on every hard drive... it MUST be there for the drive to work. So, a pre-used drive already has the MBR configured somehow. (And I suspect that all new ones aren't completely blank. There may even be instructions in the BIOS of the motherboard that disallows changing the MBR.) So, the unsuspecting user trying to install *nix on a drive (box?) that previously ran a non*nix OS (or on a new drive/box that was 'prepared' to run non*nix) may hit a brick wall. That was certainly my situation til last week. My 1st box didn't work with a dual boot... didn't even work after getting a new 2nd hard drive. But I finally got a 2nd box up and running with MEPIS (via the live CD, and thanks to the personal recommendation of someone on the Canadian WTFL digest http://www.marcelgagne.com/wftl-lug.html). That was after I made the decision to have one box running *nix ONLY. (The other box still must use non*nix, cos its programs haven't been developed for *nix... yet.) Am I acting fairly? By locking out non*nix from the 2nd box... when the 1st box locks out *nix? ----- Original Message ----- From: Roy Britten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 11:02 AM Subject: Re: Shutdown during boot [SOLVED] > ... I will admit to a certain amount of surprise that the network boot toolset (Linux-based, and branded by a certain distribution with ties to Novell) would modify the MBR, disabling Grub, without asking or notifying the user. This occurred even though I *hadn't* proceeded with any actions that (should have) touched the disk. Roy.
