On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 8:59 AM, Steve <[email protected]> wrote:
> Looking at your setup, I'd say that you put the drives back in in the wrong > order, so that sda - with the bootstrap - is now sdb. Whether you can > recover from this now, I'm not too sure. Still worth a try though (: > > Steve I'll check that out, though I suspect I've done too much damage now :) Thanks, David > > On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 08:51:32 +1300 > David Merriman <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi all, I've got a problem which I'm unable to fix, and I need a little > > help. I've done some fiddling, and now I can't boot up my machine any > more. > > Here's the background: > > > > I have two removable SATA drive bays in my PC. Normally I have two > drives > > sitting in there, one with SuSE 10.3 (my normal system) and SuSE 11.1 on > it, > > and the other with a single FAT32 partition with a bunch of video files > on > > it. > > > > From memory (I'm at work at the moment), the partitions are set up as > > follows: > > sda1 - 1GB boot partition > > sda5 - 2GB swap > > sda6 - 30GB SuSE 11.1 (/) > > sda7 - 60GB SuSE 11.1 (/home) > > sda8 - 20GB SuSE 10.3 (/) > > sda9 - 150GB SuSE 10.3 (/home) > > sdb5 - 160GB FAT32 > > > > Last week I bought a new drive, took out the other two drives, and > plugged > > this one in. I intend(ed) to use this drive as a playpen, just to mess > about > > with different flavours of Linux, and so far it has PCLinuxOS, Mepis and > > Linux Mint on it. That worked fine. > > > > Later I put my original drives back in, intending to boot up SuSE 10.3 > > again, but the system stopped after the BIOS check, with the word 'GRUB' > in > > the top-left corner. Now normally it says 'GRUB Loading Stage 1.5' (I > > think), and half the time it will hang at that point anyway, requiring a > > reboot, but it's always done that (that may be a symptom in itself). > This > > time it just said 'GRUB', and stopped. > > > > I assumed that GRUB or some part of the boot sequence had got corrupted > > (don't ask me how, the drives were just sitting on the desk until I > plugged > > them back in...), so I booted off my SuSE 11.1 DVD, selected 'Boot from > hard > > disk', and was then able to boot from the hard disk as usual. > > > > I then tried using the recovery utilities on the DVD to fix the boot > issue, > > and that's when things started to get worse. I first ran the automatic > > recovery utility; it said some part of the boot sequence was incorrect, > and > > attempted to fix it. I was still unable to boot, so then I tried the > manual > > recovery method, trying various combinations of booting from the Master > Boot > > Record, from the boot partition, the root partition, rewriting the MBR, > etc. > > etc. Long story short, no matter what I tried it wouldn't boot up, and > now > > I'm at the point where I can't boot at all, and I'm stuck. > > > > I wasted over 3 hours on it last night, and I've exhausted my admittedly > > limited knowledge (and patience). Short of reinstalling, I dont' know > what > > else to try, so I'm hoping that one of you kind souls will be able to > have a > > look at this machine for me, and hopefully get it back into a working > > state. I'm happy to pay for your time in whatever fashion you prefer, > > money, blank disks, whatever. > > > > If anyone is able to help, I'd be most grateful. As I say, I'm at work > at > > the moment, so I can't run any commands on the machine for you, but I'll > try > > and answer any other questions you may have. > > > > Thanks, > > David Merriman > > -- > > Hardware: The parts of a computer system that can be kicked. > > > > > -- > Steve <[email protected]> >
