Hello Fellow Linux Users,

I have installed a dual boot of Windows XP professional and RedHat
Linux 9.0. During the installation, I chose to use GRUB to manage the
boot. My understanding is that GRUB is installed in the MBR of the
first IDE hard drive. I remember the boot sequence is specified in
/etc/grup.conf.

That went well for a long while when this happened.

My windows XP started to have some "blue-screen" crashing issue. After
trying a butch of options which include using the windows XP disk to do
a recovery installation, now the XP seems to be OK. The new problem is
my due boot prompt is lost. Now the computer directly boot into
windows.

I have a couple of questions:

1) How do I recover my dual boot mode?

2) Is there sort of an "independent" way of installing the linux boot
loader? In other words, I can do what ever to the Windows partition and
the linux boot will not be affected. I heard installing the boot loader
in the first sector of Linux boot partition. Not sure that is the way
and not sure how to do it - I followed the Red Hat pretty much default
suggestion.

Thanks so much for any help.

Stephen

> Thanks so much for any help.
>
> Stephen


This has been covered many times in ng, Try a Google on Linux boot rescue.

Dave

stephenswang@yahoo.com wrote:

> I have a couple of questions:
>
> 1) How do I recover my dual boot mode?

You should be able to boot into Linux
using your first RedHat CD in rescue mode.
Then you can re-install grub with "grub-install /dev/hda",

> 2) Is there sort of an "independent" way of installing the linux boot
> loader? In other words, I can do what ever to the Windows partition and
> the linux boot will not be affected. I heard installing the boot loader
> in the first sector of Linux boot partition. Not sure that is the way
> and not sure how to do it - I followed the Red Hat pretty much default
> suggestion.

You can install grub in a partition rather than in the MBR,
but I don't think there is any advantage.

Nb If I had had your problems with the Windows partition,
I would have started by saving the MBR with
"dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr bs=512 count=1"
and then if necessary it could be restored with
"dd of=/dev/hda if=mbr bs=512 count=1".


--
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