On Wednesday 04 April 2007 12:28, Doug McGarrett wrote: > I suppose this should go to the bugzilla thing, but I don't know how to get > there, and those who do that probably read here. > > On another computer, which is down partly for this reason, I had XP on the > first hard drive, and SuSE 10.0 on the second hard drive, using Grub for > the boot controller, and Reiser FS. > > It turned out that the second HD failed. Then it was impossible to boot > the system, since it seems that Grub portions out its booter between the > first and second drives. The first drive attempts to boot the system, but > it comes up with Grub, and then Grub error, and then you are in the pot. > Nothing will help, since part of Grub must be on the second drive, which > has failed. > > (I have had some semi-professionals check out drive 2 and verify that it > failed. The Best-Buy Geek Squad. They don't seem to know very much about > Linux.) > > It's absolutely ridiculous that a boot manager should share its secrets > over two drives. This is an excellent example of why not.
Who configured it that way? I would have done one of two or three things, none of them what you did. 1. Configure Windows to boot drive 2. I don't know the details, but Google does. 2. Configure the BIOS to boot drive two. Configure Grub to be able to boot Linux, and to boot the first drive. I know how to do this: Title Winders. root (hd) chainloader +1 boot 3. Maybe, swap the drives, install Linux on the first and able to boot either, as in 2. I've had this setup, it works well. > > I need some kind of boot CD or DVD (or floppy) that can be run from a CD > drive that will restore the boot of the XP system. Or some kind of NTFS > boot disk. I think I need to have a program that will access the disk and > send it "FIX MBR" from some conversation some time ago, here. > The Geek Squad doesn't seem to know how to do any of this. And I don't > either. You need to find a means to get a boot record into place, without corrupting the partition info. I think freedos can help with its fdisk. Probably, Your XP Install disk can do it, certainly reinstalling without reformatting will fix it. You need a new disk, "borrow" it to backup stuff or transfer XP to it. Knoppix plus the ntfs tools it contains can do this. Just take it slow and steady, check each step before committing it and it's fairly painless, but you do need to use the commandline. > I would be happy to pay for the floppy or CD that would make the XP machine > work again. It will never have Linux on it anymore, but I have this > machine, with its own problems running Linux, and until I couldn't print, > fairly happily. Your choice, but a bit radical. -- Cheers John Summerfield -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
