Fucking Grub Boot Loader For Linux


sam fisher

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 11, 2004
Messages
9,452
Location
Bristol, UK
Website
blog.peter-r.co.uk
How can i get rid of it?
I have tried deleteing the partition and it boots into this sort of grub bash shell and overides my cd booting in my bios so i cannot boot from my xp cd to reinstate my bootloader as my master bootloader. I know it exists still because if i select windows in grub it boots to my windows boot loader. I have remover linus but am getting annoyed with this /BOOT partition.

P.S. I am annoued because i just spent 2 hours looking for my partion magic boot discs so i could ,thankfully, restore the /BOOT partion.
 
It overrides your BIOS? That's weird....

Unless you have a HDD before your CD rom in the BIOS as a boot device, it should check for a CD before it even hands over to GRUB...
 
sam fisher posted on Sep 25 2004 at 09:34 PM said:
How can i get rid of it?
I have tried deleteing the partition and it boots into this sort of grub bash shell and overides my cd booting in my bios so i cannot boot from my xp cd to reinstate my bootloader as my master bootloader. I know it exists still because if i select windows in grub it boots to my windows boot loader. I have remover linus but am getting annoyed with this /BOOT partition.

P.S. I am annoued because i just spent 2 hours looking for my partion magic boot discs so i could ,thankfully, restore the /BOOT partion.
It isn't your /boot partition, it's the MBR (Master Boot Record). Also grub cannot disable the cd boot, as Axeman says you've probably got your hard drive set as the boot device. If XP comes with fdisk then you can restore the MBR to something windows likes with 'fdisk /mbr', but knowing how helpful Microsoft are they've probably removed fdisk completly and replaced it with something that barely works.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I vaguely recall sys c: nuking the entire drive, fdisk /mbr is the way to go.

Simply put the Windows XP CD will wipe it, so will a DOS boot disk, you can also do it from linux (slightly differently). The BIOS should NOT give your hard disk priority over the CD, find a way to change it. It really should be possible unless you have the crappiest of crap BIOSs.
 
Vimacs posted on Sep 26 2004 at 12:01 AM said:
you cant read at all can you?


Lay of him a bit, will you? not being able to read is quite a problem these days on internet forums. How will those people that can't read or lack the social skills to thank someone for posting a suggestion to fix a problem ever get a job?

We should feel sorry for them instead of flaming them.. they can't help it it must be something with their DNA or with the teacher at high school or ... or.... well you get the point.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
oh god.. I did this a while back... whoever said fdisk /mbr is correct but to get to thecommand line you either have to get a floppy disk to boot to a dos like command or use the XP disc during boot up.
 
yaustar posted on Sep 26 2004 at 12:58 AM said:
oh god.. I did this a while back... whoever said fdisk /mbr is correct but to get to thecommand line you either have to get a floppy disk to boot to a dos like command or use the XP disc during boot up.
The problem is it won't boot the XP cd when the /boot partion is gone.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
yaustar posted on Sep 26 2004 at 02:58 AM said:
... you either have to get a floppy disk to boot to a dos like command ...
...
 
Last edited by a moderator:
sam fisher posted on Sep 26 2004 at 10:36 AM said:
yaustar posted on Sep 26 2004 at 12:58 AM said:
oh god.. I did this a while back... whoever said fdisk /mbr is correct but to get to thecommand line you either have to get a floppy disk to boot to a dos like command or use the XP disc during boot up.
The problem is it won't boot the XP cd when the /boot partion is gone.

That's simply not possible.
Either your XP cd corrupt or your bios settings are wrong.
Also keep in mind that the CD needs some time to be recognized by the CDROM,
so if it doesn't boot the first time you inserted it, simply reset and keep the CD in the drive.

Also be sure you press a key when booting, cause WinXP boot cd says "Press a key to boot from CD" before it actually boots...
If you see that message, press a key, or it will boot from harddisk.
 
Last edited:
Rico posted on Sep 25 2004 at 10:09 PM said:
I vaguely recall sys c: nuking the entire drive, fdisk /mbr is the way to go.

Simply put the Windows XP CD will wipe it, so will a DOS boot disk, you can also do it from linux (slightly differently). The BIOS should NOT give your hard disk priority over the CD, find a way to change it. It really should be possible unless you have the crappiest of crap BIOSs.

"Sys" is actually a hang-up from the DOS days. It made a disk (floppy or HDD) insto a system disk by copying the system files (e.g. IO.sys, MSDOS.sys and various others) to the drive. you could use it to make a disk bootable. AFAIK, it doesn;t even do anything on 2000 and above, or maybe doesn't even exist (?)...

The BIOS only hands over to the HDD for a boot once it goes through the other boot devices and doesn't get a sucessful boot. BIOS actually stands for Basic Input Output System, and lies lower in the structure than the MBR. When it gets to your HDD, it reads the mbr, which contains instructions as to what to do to initiate a boot. This either brings up a boot menu (a la GRUB, LILO, XP multiboot etc) or just initiates the booting of a single OS. Fdisk /mbr just resets the mbr on HDD0 to boot the Microsoft OS that is on it (I believe) and not to go through any boot menus etc.

If your XP disk doesn't boot, it is either damaged, or never booted in the first place. This could especially be true if you have a dodgy copy of XP.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah but reinstalling GRUB isn't a big deal. grub-install --root-directory=/boot /dev/hda

However it has caused me some grief... it pretty much nuked Windows XP today (it now only boots as far as the Welcome Screen, except the welcome screen is blank and has only the XP logo against a blue background). Thank goodness for gentoo/knoppix...
 
Easiest way is to leave XP and LILO/GRUB on different hard drives, then switch them in BIOS. You could even use a small HD (I think) for LILO/GRUB, and have it boot off a GNU/Linux partion on your big HD... I could never get GRUB to work at all, or LILO to boot Windows.
 
Back
Top