no mbr? no hdd bios?

[sethrothompson]

Hello there, I seem to have made an error that I cannot correct (at least by trying to figure it out on my own). First off I had a 120 gig that had windows, and a 500 that had all my linux stuff. I decided I should format the 120 and use it as a gentoo install, since I had ubuntu on my 500. Well after installing, deleting my ubuntu install, and formatting both harddrives... my machine won't seem to boot. I have gone back and tried to reinstall numerous times, but it appears that I either didn't delete GRUB, or I've corrupted the MBR, or something. I'm honestly not sure. When I try to boot I get a blank GRUB screen, even though i've tried to install Lilo and grub.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks

[oz]

You can use the SuperGrub LiveCD to boot Windows or Linux if they are installed on your system. It can also be used to restore the MBR:

Super Grub Disk Webpage: Home Page

[sethrothompson]

Ahhh. Thank you. Grrr. The only problem now is that the only OS I have is a live cd, and it's not wanting to mount anything to a cd and my laptop is only a dvd driver.
sigh.

[sethrothompson]

Alright, I've got it going but it seems to be doing the same thing, I've tried to delete all MBR and grub/lilo on all of my drives and install new, setting active and hidden partitions and everything. Nothing seems to be working.

[oz]

Check around on the liveCD. I think there's an option on it to remove GRUB from the MBR, which should allow you to at least reinstall an OS.

[kevkim55]

Well after installing, deleting my ubuntu install, and formatting both harddrives... my machine won't seem to boot. I have gone back and tried to reinstall numerous times, but it appears that I either didn't delete GRUB, or I've corrupted the MBR, or something. I'm honestly not sure. When I try to boot I get a blank GRUB screen, even though i've tried to install Lilo and grub.

If you re-formatted both the hard disks, completely erasing all the data on these disks, how can you expect your machine to boot up when, there's nothing on the disks ???!!!!

You're getting that blank GRUB screen obviously because, you deleted all the partitions but, GRUB being on MBR didn't get erased. When you try to boot, GRUB from MBR loads, since it cannot find it's next stage and menu.lst (obviously because there're no partitions), it gives you a blank screen !!?

Try to boot with an installation CD and create partitions and install the OS.

[devils casper]

Alright, I've got it going but it seems to be doing the same thing, I've tried to delete all MBR and grub/lilo on all of my drives and install new, setting active and hidden partitions and everything. Nothing seems to be working.

How did you re-install GRUB/Lilo? Which tools are you using?
Boot up from any LiveCD and execute this in Terminal/Konsole

su 
fdisk -l

OR

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.