Boot Loader On A Floppy Or Something

[Honda_Boy]

Ok i screwed up my bootloader a while back reinstalling windows on the Primary Drive SO i tried installing Linux over the windows install in an attempt to recover my files from the other hard drive. It do't work like windows so I thought in the middle of class today Hey what about a boot loader on a floppy or a boot loader i cna install form windows so i don't have to recover my files and start over. So does anyone know of any good ones out there i can use. Any hlep would be much appreciated.

(Mutters to self "why ain't I thought of this before?" )

[Dragon]

was your bootloader Grub or Lilo??

[Honda_Boy]

GRUB

[Dragon]

This was done on fc 3 but it should work with your FC4 install.

http://www.ece.concordia.ca/~yu_luo/fc3_grub.html

[shanenin]

just curious, were you try the suggestions from this link?

http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=5563

[Honda_Boy]

never worked

[naraku9333]

Fixing grub (and most bootloaders for that matter) is usually fairly simple and doesn't require reinstallation of the OS. PLease describe your hard drive and partitioning scheme, what OS's you corrently have installed and on which drive/part.

[Honda_Boy]

twin harddrive setup. i have repartioned the main drive with from fat32(98se) to NTFS(XP) (that's what messed it up) to EXT3 (FC4) (in an attempt to recover my files that failed) the second drive still has it's EXT3 format with FC4 installed but it is unbootable. I've tried to setting the jumpers on the drive for master and booting the drive by itself but nothing other than a blinking line. And it did that back before i screwed up the bootlaoder when i tried to boot the drive by itself but it worked fine when both drives were in.

I'm putting 98se back on the first drive if someone can help me fix the bootlaoder. So please give me the 98se instructions.

[naraku9333]

twin harddrive setup. i have repartioned the main drive with from fat32(98se) to NTFS(XP) (that's what messed it up) to EXT3 (FC4) (in an attempt to recover my files that failed) the second drive still has it's EXT3 format with FC4 installed but it is unbootable. I've tried to setting the jumpers on the drive for master and booting the drive by itself but nothing other than a blinking line. And it did that back before i screwed up the bootlaoder when i tried to boot the drive by itself but it worked fine when both drives were in.

I'm putting 98se back on the first drive if someone can help me fix the bootlaoder. So please give me the 98se instructions.

I'm going to assume you have only 98 installed on master drive and only Fedora on slave. Boot up Knoppix (or any other live cd) and mount the linux partition(s) if they aren't auto-mounted. Check if they are mounted with the 'df' command. After the drive is mounted, mount /proc to the drives FS

mount -t proc none /<MOUNT_POINT>/proc

then chroot into the drive (changes / to the root on the hard drive (can't think of a better ay to explain it)) as root:

chroot <MOUNT_POINT> /bin/bash

I would then run env-update && source /etc/profile, but I'm not sure if they are Gentoo specific commands. You can now fix your menu.lst if nessecary and re-install grub into mbr of booting drive. I'm going to assume your menu.lst is ok , so run

grub

then in the grub shell:

root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

that will install in MBR of first drive. If the menu.lst file is setup right you should be able to boot.

Edited December 14, 2005 by naraku9333