Linux hit me 4 times

[trommas]

I`m real angry and frustrated now!

Ok, first about me...
I`ve been into computers and owned one for over 10 years. I soon have a bachelour in Informations Systems. I use linux at my university. I read distrowatch.com every day. In other words I should be able to get a distro up and running...

My specs.. AMD64, sata hd, everything else is standard. Winxp is installed on one partition.

First attempt...
I try Knoppix 3.7 live cd.
- It does not find any harddrive (possibly because it don`t recognize sata)

Second attempt...
I try Mandrake 10.1.
- It does not find any harddrive to install unto.

Third attempt...
I try Fedora Core 3 for AMD64.
- It installes neatly on my free unpartitioned space, but fail to make a dualboot - hence I never get to boot it, only winxp. I posted it on this forum, got lot`s of answers - none worked.

Fouth attempt...
I try Ubuntu 4.10 for AMD64.
- It installes, but I get an error that X has failed, and therefore I will not recieve any graphical user interface. I`m left helpless with a command prompt. When I reboot, it is revealed that Ubuntu has destroyed my MBR - hence I cannot boot neither Ubuntu or winxp. I have to format my winxp partition loosing huge amounts of applications, games, documents, pictures and all my bookmarks in Opera.

I JUST WANT A CLEAN DUALBOOT

Why can`t this happen

I`m starting to give up.

[loft306]

Ubuntu has destroyed my MBR - hence I cannot boot neither Ubuntu or winxp. I have to format my winxp partition loosing huge amounts of applications, games, documents, pictures and all my bookmarks in Opera.

well first of all you dont need te reformatt and reinstall windows...all you have to do is put it the windows cd and go to the rescue section and fixmbr and if you have a win boot floppy all you need to do there is

fdisk fixmbr

or simply leave grub or lilo installed as your bootloader

and it can happen when using sata or sata raid there is one more step sometimen to make it boot and that is findidg the actual device that the linux is installed on and putting that into the bootloader (when the install will usualy call it /dev/hda when using sata or sata raid the dedice will actualy be /dev/sda or /dev/ida or /dev/ide and that can be found out in /dev by looking for devicen in the directories

[trommas]

well first of all you dont need te reformatt and reinstall windows...all you have to do is put it the windows cd and go to the rescue section and fixmbr and if you have a win boot floppy all you need to do there is

fdisk fixmbr

Ok, thanks for that tips, that means I can continue trying out linux distros.

Any ideas why Ubuntu crashed? I realy like the philosophy behind the distro, and would like to contribute to the project..

[Ethyriel]

It could be so many things, you'll need to send us the log. It should be in /var/log, I forget what it's called for xfree86, maybe xfree86.0.log

[mariana.malta]

well first of all you dont need te reformatt and reinstall windows...all you have to do is put it the windows cd and go to the rescue section and fixmbr and if you have a win boot floppy all you need to do there is

fdisk fixmbr

or simply leave grub or lilo installed as your bootloader

and it can happen when using sata or sata raid there is one more step sometimen to make it boot and that is findidg the actual device that the linux is installed on and putting that into the bootloader (when the install will usualy call it /dev/hda when using sata or sata raid the dedice will actualy be /dev/sda or /dev/ida or /dev/ide and that can be found out in /dev by looking for devicen in the directories

I wanted to installed windows XP and Edubuntu 6.06 on a brand new PC, same drive 2 partitions, dual boot.

I had some problems with Edubuntu because of the Intel Graphics card inboard. But after a few attemps with different parameters It worked. Grub installed in MBR perfectly. I was happy. Until....

when I booted again the pc in Windows it gave me a fatal error. I can boot to Edubuntu but not to Windows. The MBR is ok, but something went wrong with the boot of windows. As I do not uderstand a thing of windows I thought in:
1. Install windows again in the first partition
2. Boot with a LInux floppy and then update and install grub on the MBR

But not possible. This PC doesn't allow me to boot from floppies!

Then I thought:
1. Install windows again in the first partition
2. Boot from LIve Edubuntu
3. Update and install grub on the MBR

BEfore installing windows I tried this procedure but:
In Edubuntu I can mount the windows partition and see all the files that are there, but I am not able to do the chroot to the drive (only one /dev/sda)

then I thought:
I boot with Knoppix 4 instead of Live Edubuntu.

I did it, could see the disk /dev/sda (it mounts it automaticlly) I could chroot to this disk. I could do update-grub but can't actually do what I want: grub-install /dev/sda! it gives me several errors saying that /dev/null is not accessible!

I am hopeless here...

The harddrive is new, so I can start all over again because I do not have anything on it as data. But why do I have to install EVERYTHING again if it should be possible to re-do the MBR after a windows installation?

If I boot with a Windows XP CD and go to the recover mode, what actually should I do? simply "fixmbr"?

And what happens?

Can you give me a help?

Thank you,
Mariana

[Kojak]

when I booted again the pc in Windows it gave me a fatal error. I can boot to Edubuntu but not to Windows. The MBR is ok, but something went wrong with the boot of windows.

What happened is probably that the grub entry for Windows XP was not written well/correctly. This can be fixed from the Linux system. The file that needs some editing is /boot/grub/menu.lst. We can assist you with editing the file, but for that we would need to see yout /etc/fstab file and the menu.lst file here. There is no need to reinstall anything for now.

This PC doesn't allow me to boot from floppies!

If you do have a floppy drive on your PC then you can set it to boot from a floppy first. For this, hit "del" when the computer starts, which will lead you to the BIOS where you can change the boot-sequence of your devices.

If I boot with a Windows XP CD and go to the recover mode, what actually should I do? simply "fixmbr"?

Yes, this will reinstall the windows bootloader and erase grub.

[mariana.malta]

I did try to boot from the floppy (set it on the BIOS) but i got the message saying that it is no more possible to boot from a floppy!

I did succeded in creating a GRUB boot CD disk but don't know what to do with it. It boots perfectly from it but I didn't catch yet the following of this clue...

I am sending you:
fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda2 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda1 /media/sda1 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sdb1 /media/sdb1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sda5 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0


menu.lst
title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-26-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/sda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-26-386
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-23-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386 root=/dev/sda2 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-23-386
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
boot

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microsoft Windows XP Professional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1


Thank you for your help.
Mariana