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EXTREMELY BIG problem!

smgsmg
edited December 2004 in Software
I have WinXP on my primary HDD. I have 2 secondary HDDs of which I use one. The other just lies somewere. Today I decided to make something useful of the lying one so I changed the secondary disk to that lying one. And installed SuSE on it. O nthe secondary disk. The install overwrote the bootloader with GRUB. Now I tried to boot without the lying one HDD on whicj I installed SuSE. Nope. I just can't use the useful secondary disk which I used before. I have all my music on it! Is there help??

Comments

  • chigowolfschigowolfs
    ?? the one you installed suse on does not boot???
  • smgsmg
    no, it boots, but i dont wanna use it. now i only want to have my 2 regular windows hdds.
  • chigowolfschigowolfs
    and all you have is music on the suse one??? is that all you want to save???
  • smgsmg
    No. Music is on the other one that no isnt in the comp. On the suse one is the MBR, so i need that to boot.
  • BODBOD
    cant you just use the XP drive to boot?
  • smgsmg
    Nope. The MBR is on the SuSE drive.
  • Richard HawsleyRichard Hawsley
    Hmm you may be buggered. Have you thought about doing a repair installation of Windows XP on your drive. Just insert the windows cd restart your computer let setup start and select the option to repair an installation of windows.

    Richard
  • BODBOD
    Richard Hawsley wrote:
    Hmm you may be buggered. Have you thought about doing a repair installation of Windows XP on your drive. Just insert the windows cd restart your computer let setup start and select the option to repair an installation of windows.

    Richard

    thtar usually works for me
  • ThumpThump
    smg, you could try boot magic and see for sure if you
    have another bootable OS available that's just being over ridden or bypassed. With Windows 98 I would
    boot to a dos floppy and write fdisk /mbr and it will erase the mbr and replace it with a new one. I don't
    remember how with XP but someone told it a while
    back. I seem to be unable to send you e-mail, I don't know why.

    Thump
  • FatTurtleFatTurtle
    fixmbr should do the trick assuming the the widows drive is the master.

    Pop the windows xp cd in, and at the first screen press R to go to the repair console. Then type fixmbr and press enter.
  • smgsmg
    unable? wait. gotta see that. Ok the boot flp thingy might work here too!
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • wingzeroisminewingzeroismine
    edited December 2004
    Tomchu wrote:
    Yay for Linux again.
    Haha... the way I see it.... if an "operating system" can't handle basic hard drive features like master boot records properly (meaning when you format, it goes too) it shouldn't be used. But since it's all open source... I'd think someone would figure out how to properly code these things by now (we have.. Mandrake 10? Red Hat 10? aparently the first 9 versions didn't fix this and these haven't either).

    I'm not trying to start an OS battle here, I just don't like the way linux handles it's boot records and partition structures.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • nighticenightice
    You *do* know that you can't really boot Linux without LILO or GRUB, right? It has to install its own MBR. And yes, I know about the issue with Windows XP and the 2.6 kernel.

    Anyway, SMG - try making a floppy with GAG and see if you can boot Windows with that.
  • wingzeroisminewingzeroismine
    nightice wrote:
    You *do* know that you can't really boot Linux without LILO or GRUB, right? It has to install its own MBR. And yes, I know about the issue with Windows XP and the 2.6 kernel.
    2.6 is the newest kernel correct? "Issue with XP" more like they want to prevent people from dual booting. And ok so linux won't load without a bootloader, NT won't either. At least when you format an NT drive it erases the bootsector too.
  • smgsmg
    LOL I can boot to Windows! Just that I need to have the SuSE drive cause thats where the MBR is now. Ok, ill just make fixmbr in repair.
  • TCPMetaTCPMeta
    Just add Windows to the grub bootloader.

    http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/gr ... HOWTO.html
  • smgsmg
    AAAARGH... Windows is on my primary drive. SuSE and MBR is on the secondary. I can boot to Windows, but then i have to use the secondary drive. I want the MBR on the primary windows drive, thats all.
  • FatTurtleFatTurtle
    use FixMBR and fixboot in the recovery console. The MBR is still on the primary HD (Windows one) but it just links to the Bootloader on the second drive.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • smgsmg
    Ok, I'll try that tomorrow.
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