I have had an unfortunate experience with installing SXCR SNV44 (never had this problem with any version prior to SXCR SNV44).
My system contained the following partitions: FAT32 15GB Partition 0 (Primary) ext3 (Ubuntu) Partition 1 (Primary) Linux Swap Partition 2 (Primary) Solaris Partition 3 (Primary) SNV42 - bfu'd SNV43 During installation of SNV44, I deleted the linux swap partition and existing Solaris partition. I then created a new Solaris partition, did a customised disk layout, and installed. I verified that I had not changed the other partitions and that the partition table layout still looked correct. On first boot, my GRUB menu still showed my old entries except it now said SNV44 (which at first I thought was great!). I then proceeded to boot and finish the installation of the remaining CDs. However, after finishing installation and rebooting, I noticed the GRUB menu now contained two entries that said Windows (odd...). I booted into Solaris, everything was fine, so then rebooted and went to select one of my Windows boot entries. It told me invalid or unrecognised executable format (for both entries). I then tried manually using grub to do a: rootnoverify (hd0,0) chainloader +1 boot It gave me the same message as earlier. I figured a quick boot of the Windows XP Professional CD followed by a fixboot and fixmbr would set all right in the world (sigh). So, I booted up the XP CD, did a fixboot and fixmbr in recovery console mode, and then rebooted. It then told me that NTLDR is missing. So I started getting worried. I then rebooted again and this time went to the recovery console and tried to a "dir" to see the files on C:\. Much to my dismay, all my files were listed as garbage characters (extended ASCII). I also discovered that I could no longer boot Ubuntu either by chainloading it's partition (where I had installed GRUB). I didn't lose any important data because I did backup my system fairly recently. But at the moment, I'm stick with a only partially useable box because I'm out of the country and I don't have my Windows CDs, Linux CDs and everything else to reinstall. This is dismaying to say the least. I'm mainly posting this in warning others that installing SNV44 may be bad juju for you as it was for me :( I have never had this issue before installing any version of Solaris, so it is a bit disheartening even if I know it can happen. It seems that SNV44's installer / fdisk somehow corrupted both my Windows and Linux partitions. Sigh. I won't be doing anything such as reformatting, so if there is anyone with some tips on a possible way to rescue this (to save me a lot of time) or someone who would like more information, please email me or post here. Thanks, -Shawn This message posted from opensolaris.org
