On Fri, 14 Nov 2003 08:27:59 -0800, Chris Campbell wrote:

> I have an IBM T30 laptop that came with Win XP Pro on which I also
> installed Linux (Libranet 2.8.1). That included the GRUB bootloader,
> and it WORKED FINE FOR MONTHS until last Saturday when GRUB wouldn't
> proceed past stage1.5. I got some help on the net and was able to
> redo the GRUB setup and boot the PC.
>
> Once.
>
> After the successful boot, and an hour of pentup use of computer (work
> emails at 1am, woooo), I shut it down. Then when I restarted it the
> next day, I had the exact same problem.
>
> I played with it for an hour (booting Gentoo and redoing GRUB several
> times) and determined that as long as I boot into Linux, everything
> stays fine. But booting into WinXP is the kiss of death and ruins the
> GRUB install -- I can boot into WinXP *once*, and then the next time I
> boot GRUB will be hosed -- hanging at stage1.5 as before.
>
> I normally leave this laptop up and running WinXP all week (Mon-Fri)
> with no shutdowns, so last Saturday's failed boot was the first time
> the laptop had been booted in nearly a week. This happens to be a
> work laptop, spending its days on the work network, where our IT
> admins (at my colossally huge corporation) keep a very tight grip on
> the patch state of all computers. If MS issues a critical update, not
> only are there suddenly panic-y IT drones running around making sure
> machines are patched, but the next time I log in, it gets patched
> automatically.
>
> My theory is that a critical update went out from Redmond-land in the
> past week or two and was installed on my laptop by corporate IT, and
> since then every time I boot it hoses GRUB. That's my only theory
> because I haven't changed anything else on the machine recently.
>
> If this is true, then word of this trouble is only going to start
> trickling in as WinXP dual-booters apply this recent update and
> discover their GRUBs are hosed *and* connect the dots about the
> update. So I'm probably on the bleeding edge on this. I hate that
>
> Anyone else out there A) running WinXP, B) patched it up in the last
> two weeks, C) running the GRUB bootloader and D) tried rebooting it
> recently?
>
> It might just be an IBM T30 thing ...
>
> - Chris
>
> P.S. Note, if you match A, B and C, but not D yet, go make rescue
> disks before you reboot

Does your laptop have a floppy drive you can boot from. If so, it is not
hard to make a GRUB floppy boot disk even with a menu item to reinstall
GRUB to your laptop Master Boot Record. Plus, a floppy GRUB boot disk
boots fairly fast (a lot quicker than lilo)