Re: xp linux dual-boot saga

kosmicgeek@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

grub, and lilos(?) both seem to begin to load but halt with either the
word "GRUB" or an "L" left onscreen.

This suggests (to me) that grub has not found /boot .
But you haven't really given enough information,
eg where are you installing grub?
In the MBR, or in a partition?

Did you really go to all the trouble
of re-installing Windows and Linux separately?

Can you boot Linux from the CD of whatever distribution you are using?
If you have a floppy drive,
I would get tomsrtbt on a floppy,
and run Linux from that to see what the situation is.

Also I would save the MBR before any operation that might change it,
eg with something like
dd if=/dev/hda of=/tmp/mbr-20060305 bs=512 count=1
Then you can re-install it afterwards if necessary with
dd of=/dev/hda if=/tmp/mbr-20060305 bs=512 count=1

And when installing grub, it is worth adding --recheck, eg
grub-install --recheck /dev/hda

Just a couple of random thoughts ...


--
Timothy Murphy
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
.

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