Repair MBR etc.

[topnode]

Here's what happened:

I have a system running Win2K Server installed on primary master HDD or hda.

Have a second hdd (20GB) which i formatted. Here's where i installed Redhat 8.0.

During the installation process i used disk druid to partition the second HDD. prepared 8GB for linux (/root ext3) and 2X my physical RAM=256MB for the swap leaving 11+GB Free on the HDD.

I chose GRUB for bootloader, boot DOS default.

The install went fine, problem is when i rebooted, GRUB didn't show up, just... "error" on a black screen and it stayed that way. The only way i could boot up to linux is by using the linux bootdisk created during install.

But now I can't boot up into Win2K Server.

1.) How do i restore the MBR of my NTFS HDD?
2.) How do i install Linux in such a way that I can safely dual boot it with Win2K Server?

I had installed linux earlier on another PC running WinXP and GRUB worked fine.

Thanks for the help you can afford this lowly Linux Newbie...

[homey]

Hi,

Take a look about six post down at Repairing the Grub Bootloader.

[topnode]

Will try your tip homey, thanks.

BTW will it be possible to do the editing while in linux or do i really have to boot up through the linux cd?

[homey]

You are one of the rare few who actually made the boot disk!!!
Thus you can just boot into linux and do the grubby thing from a terminal prompt.

[topnode]

Okay will do this in about 14 hours it's 12midnight right now where i am. Will post back results. Thanks homey!

[TMAN]

That tip WILL NOT WORK (in my experience at least) because you installed grub to MBR and 2k is NTFS. Follow this

[topnode]

Yes TMAN, i just tried homey's tip to no avail. The problem with my situation is i already went and did what your link tells me not to do.

Is there any way to restore my Win2K system without having to reinstall it on another partition (i still have 11GB free on my secondary HDD) just to restore access to my files?

Thank you all!

[topnode]

I did a clean install of Win2K Server on my remaining partition. Tried to do a recovery of my old installation but it kept asking me for an ERD (Emergency Recovery Disk) which i didn't have on hand.

Things working fine now just have to work on making it dual-boot with Linux since it now goes straight to win2K.

Here's a map of my partitions

Primary master 4GB HDD - Hd0,0 (old NTFS installation) (4GB)
Secondary Master 20GB HDD - Hd1,0 RH8 ext3 (8GB)
- Hd1,1 RH8 swap (260MB)
- Hd1,2 (new NTFS install) (11GB)

I guess TMAN's post will be applicable in this case.

[homey]

Hi,

On the grub proceedure, I had it fail once using the first parts "root hd1,0) and setup (hd0)" so I tried the second part "grub-install /dev/hda" . Then I went back and redid the first part and it worked.

By the way, my computer is a dual boot with W2K using NTFS.