Re: serious problem with MBR

[Thierry Laronde]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 03:13:43PM +0100, Vincent GUYOT wrote:
> Hello,

Hello,

> 
> I send you all this email, hoping an answer before formatting my hard drive :(
> To GRUB specialists (developpers & so): if you never heard about this, tell 
> me. May be isn't it because GRUB.
> 
>[..]
> the problem:
> I switched ON my computer, nothing on the screen but "GRUB >", MBR seemt 
> corrupted. 

It was "normal" ; the only thing is that GRUB hasn't found the
"menu.lst" file that displays the graphical menu. With _this_ GRUB you
should be able to boot everything by hand. At this stage, there was a
surprise, but, actually, no catastroph...

>Booting with Win98 CDROM, I did "c:\fdisk /mbr" to restore a 
> usable MBR, thinking about re-install the GRUB later.
> Then, I booted again, with my virgin MBR. Win98 works, but D: partition is no 
> more there! My Linux partitions also seem go away!

The problem starts here : win98 is unable to recognize foreign format,
and fdisk /mbr has put back a table partition that I suspect to be less
than optimal.

> 
> panic:
> I tried to boot with linux distro CDROM: "no valid linux partition found" (or 
> something like that)
> I tried the well-known Partition Magic software: 1 partition found, other 
> space is marked "unformatted".
> 
> question:
> is it a known GRUB'bug?

This is not the fault of GRUB. Problem is with the distribution (the
"menu.lst" wasn't put at the right place) or there were a problem with
the partition of your disk ("menu.lst" was not found because nothing has
been installed, of the installation has failed in some way).


At this stage reinstalling _Linux_ is the best way to go. When you're
done look at the info files for grub "$> info grub", and read the french
grub howto :

http://www.cri74.org/linux/howto/grub-howto.html

[or retrieve the whole thing : grub-howto.html.tar.gz at the same
address]

Cheers,
-- 
Thierry LARONDE <address@hidden>
10, rue du Bel Air, 74000 ANNECY - FRANCE/ Tel : 33.(0)4.50.67.46.61
/home du SDF (Site Debian Francophone) : http://sdf.polynum.org/