system no longer dual-boots
I'm looking for any suggestions about why my home pc will no longer dual-boot. Full story is that my pc has 2 disks, first one partitioned with Windows 2000, 2nd disk with Fedora Core 4. 2nd disk connected to the 1st, and the 1st connected to cpu board. Dual-boot worked fine for many months. Then system crashed, and message appeared during reboot "hard drive failure imminent". Local pc repair guy copied Windows disk to a new (larger) disk, and replaced that first disk. However, now system only boots Windows. There no longer is even a prompt to choose between Windows and FC4. Using Knoppix, it appears that both drives are physically connected properly, as I can see the /mnt/hda1 (Windows) and /mnt/hdb2 (FC4) partitions. I tried re-installing FC4 using my 4 cds, which looked promising when right away it gave me the message "The installer is unable to detect the boot loader currently in use on your system". However, even clicking the "Create new boot loader configuration" button, this message appears after the re-install: "No kernel packages were installed on your system. Your boot loader configuration will not be changed." It also made no difference for the boot loader location if I clicked either "/dev/hda Master Boot Record" or "/dev/hdb1 first sector of boot partition". Any advice? Thanks!Eric
Re: system no longer dual-boots
> Local pc repair guy copied Windows disk to a new > (larger) disk, and replaced that first disk. > > However, now system only boots Windows. There no longer is even a > prompt to choose between Windows and FC4. > It is not a serious problem, but I am not sure enough of the procedure to competently advise you. The repair guy did not copy GRUB into the boot partition of the Windows disk. The Windows boot sector and GRUB can co-exist. If GRUB is there, it gets grabbed first. It is transparent to Windows, so he didn't know it was there. First get back into Linux somehow. Will your Fedora CD allow you to boot to drive 2? Alternatively, perhaps Knoppix has everything you need. You didn't make one of the those silly Rescue disks, did you? Try typing "info grub" in a terminal. The installation instructions are there. Also look in the RH manuals. I know that SuSE includes a simple script to automate the installation of GRUB. "Linux in a Nutshell" 4th Ed, O"Reilly, has a section on GRUB with a descent explanation of the procedure. If worst comes to worst, I can send you the procedure I wrote for myself the last time that happened here. I don't know how much sense it will make to anyone else, but you are welcome to it. Jim Kuzdrall ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
Re: system no longer dual-boots
>> Local pc repair guy copied Windows disk to a new >> (larger) disk, and replaced that first disk. >> >> However, now system only boots Windows. There no longer is even a >> prompt to choose between Windows and FC4. >> > It is not a serious problem, but I am not sure enough of the > procedure to competently advise you. That explanation covers the gist of it. For a more detailed bit of help with Knoppix, I have the Knoppix Pocket Reference, which is essentially a trimmed down version of Knoppix Hacks. It includes a specific fwe pages about repairing LILO and GRUB boot loader problems like this, effectively telling you line by line how to re-install each of them. If you want to see/borrow it, let me know. Otherwise, for $10, it comes in handy a good deal. -N ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
