I decided to upgrade my Redhat 9 to Fedora Core lastnite (12/2/03 9:30pm). Install seemed well until I rebooted. I simply got the word "GRUB" with a blinking cursor. No selections, couldn't type anything at all. Thankfully I created a boot disk, so I was able to boot into Fedora. Installing grub was a disaster. It is now 5am, and I just now reached my windows desktop after searching all over for a bootable windows cd to fix my mbr. The install seemed so simple that even I could do it, but no such thing. Thru the night it went from bad to worse to where the internet wouldn't even work anymore. I went to many forums and asked around for help but got no help. I went back and did a fresh install of linux, told it not to install any bootloader, but I still got the grub screen. I went to various how-to's to try an configure grub, no luck. I tried everything I can think of until it literally brought me down to tears. I love being a tech chick and I really want to get into this linux thing, but this experience has been very discouraging.
At this point I'm considering removing all traces of linux off this system for good, but I don't want to go out like that. I really want to know how to fix the problem and learn from it. At this point I can still boot from the floppy I think, but I'm scared to even reboot my system now, and I'd rather have a menu choice to boot from instead of a floppy. (floppies tend to find their way "reformatted" around here)
Can someone please steer a nice lady like myself in the right direction and start over and fix my boot now? Can I even edit my boot.ini in windows?
Thank you very much
Deb
On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 10:09, PCDEBB | Fedora-list wrote:
[various installation problems]
It's tricky to suggest specific bootloader settings without knowing more about your setup. So in general as you seem to be alright with re-installing Linux and in case there is another catastrophe you already know how to re-install the windows bootloader, I recommend you re-do the Linux install but definitely DO choose to install grub on the MBR.
Here's a post describing symptoms similar to yours, making me suspect you may have originally chosen not to install grub on the MBR: http://www.lilug.org/pipermail/2003-October/010690.html .
Also, apart from the fact that you had to use a boot floppy it's not clear what problems you actually had AFTER you managed to boot into Fedora. If there weren't any to speak of then I think all you were missing is not installing grub on the MBR. If there were other serious problems even after you booted into linux with a floppy (besides the waste of your entire evening) let us know.
On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 21:09, PCDEBB | Fedora-list wrote:
I decided to upgrade my Redhat 9 to Fedora Core lastnite (12/2/03 9:30pm). Install seemed well until I rebooted. I simply got the word "GRUB" with a blinking cursor. No selections, couldn't type anything at all. Thankfully I created a boot disk, so I was able to boot into Fedora. Installing grub was a disaster. It is now 5am, and I just now reached my windows desktop after searching all over for a bootable windows cd to fix my mbr. The install seemed so simple that even I could do it, but no such thing. Thru the night it went from bad to worse to where the internet wouldn't even work anymore. I went to many forums and asked around for help but got no help. I went back and did a fresh install of linux, told it not to install any bootloader, but I still got the grub screen. I went to various how-to's to try an configure grub, no luck. I tried everything I can think of until it literally brought me down to tears. I love being a tech chick and I really want to get into this linux thing, but this experience has been very discouraging.
I had a similar experience when I first tried Linux years ago - sorry to hear it is still this difficult.
To recover your windows functionality, you can restore the MBR using "FDISK.EXE /MBR" (older Windows versions) or "FIXMBR" - see http://www.ntfs.com/mbr-damaged.htm
However Grub is a well behaved boot loader - it will look after Linux and Windows booting if installed in the MBR.
At this point I'm considering removing all traces of linux off this system for good, but I don't want to go out like that. I really want to know how to fix the problem and learn from it. At this point I can still boot from the floppy I think, but I'm scared to even reboot my system now, and I'd rather have a menu choice to boot from instead of a floppy. (floppies tend to find their way "reformatted" around here)
If they don't have a label, they're fair game :)
Can someone please steer a nice lady like myself in the right direction and start over and fix my boot now? Can I even edit my boot.ini in windows?
I'd boot from a windows rescue CD, restore your MBR as mentioned above, get confident that everything works as expected, then boot from floppy into Fedora and install Grub onto the MBR.
Here is an example grub.conf that will allow booting Linux on the first partition hd(0,0) and windows on the second hd(0,1)
default=0 timeout=10 splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz title Fedora Core (2.4.22-1.2115.nptl) root (hd0,0) kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl ro root=LABEL=/ hdd=ide-scsi initrd /initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img title WinXP rootnoverify (hd0,1) chainloader +1
Cheers, Ben
On Wed, 2003-12-03 at 21:09, PCDEBB | Fedora-list wrote:
I decided to upgrade my Redhat 9 to Fedora Core lastnite (12/2/03 9:30pm). Install seemed well until I rebooted. I simply got the word "GRUB" with a blinking cursor. No selections, couldn't type anything at all. Thankfully I created a boot disk, so I was able to boot into Fedora. Installing grub was a disaster. It is now 5am, and I just now reached my windows desktop after searching all over for a bootable windows cd to fix my mbr. The install seemed so simple that even I could do it, but no such thing. Thru the night it went from bad to worse to where the internet wouldn't even work anymore. I went to many forums and asked around for help but got no help. I went back and did a fresh install of linux, told it not to install any bootloader, but I still got the grub screen. I went to various how-to's to try an configure grub, no luck. I tried everything I can think of until it literally brought me down to tears. I love being a tech chick and I really want to get into this linux thing, but this experience has been very discouraging.
At this point I'm considering removing all traces of linux off this system for good, but I don't want to go out like that. I really want to know how to fix the problem and learn from it. At this point I can still boot from the floppy I think, but I'm scared to even reboot my system now, and I'd rather have a menu choice to boot from instead of a floppy. (floppies tend to find their way "reformatted" around here)
Can someone please steer a nice lady like myself in the right direction and start over and fix my boot now? Can I even edit my boot.ini in windows?
Thank you very much
Deb
I had this problem before. And what I ended up doing was to boot from the Boot Floppy. Then go into /boot/grub directory and run grub-install /dev/hda. And that fixed that grub problem for me.
Wolf