Grub/MBR Problems

I had a machine that was dual booting XP and Fedora 4 just fine with grub. I decided to do a clean install of Suse 10 over Fedora b/c I didn't want the issues I was having w/ Fedora to follow.

Like a moron I deleted the linux partitions in XP with Partition Magic. I installed Suse fine, but now I can't boot up. I was getting the grub command line, but now it doesn't get that far (it says 'Error 18' I think). I've been messing with it and making it worse.


The machine has 2 hard drives, a 40 gb drive and 'secondary' 250 gb drive. I think I installed suse on the 250 gb once. Below is the output from fdisk -l and my fstab.

fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 2 30401 244188000 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 2 19762 158730201 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda6 19763 19891 1036161 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda7 19892 30401 84421543+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/hdb: 40.0 GB, 40037760000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4867 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 3825 3830 48195 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hdb2 * 1 3824 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hdb5 3825 3830 48163+ b W95 FAT32

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sda: 131 MB, 131072000 bytes
32 heads, 32 sectors/track, 250 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1024 * 512 = 524288 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 250 127984 6 FAT16
Partition 1 has different physical/logical endings:
phys=(250, 31, 32) logical=(249, 31, 32)

fstab
/dev/hda7 / reiserfs acl,user_xattr 1 1
/dev/hdb2 /windows/C ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hda5 /windows/D ntfs ro,users,gid=users,umask=0002,nls=utf8 0 0
/dev/hdb5 /windows/E vfat users,gid=users,umask=0002,utf8=true 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs noauto 0 0
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs noauto 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts mode=0620,gid=5 0 0
/dev/cdrecorder /media/cdrecorder subfs noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocha rset=utf8 0 0
/dev/dvd /media/dvd subfs noauto,fs=cdfss,ro,procuid,nosuid,nodev,exec,iocha rset=utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy subfs noauto,fs=floppyfss,procuid,nodev,nosuid,sync 0 0
none /subdomain subdomainfs noauto 0 0

I can boot the installed suse with the installation disk and I can see all the data on the windows partitions.

Any help would be MUCH appreciated.

Brendan

i did that once and what worked for me was to use my xp disk and boot to recovery mode and use the fixmbr function to replace the xp bootloader.
then i put my suse disk back in and rebooted went to the repair in there and reinstalled grub. worked for me.

Well...

My original plan was to go in and use the xp rescue disk to fix the mbr. I did that (incorrectly, appearently) and now I can't get the xp rescue disk to work.

do you have a win98 disk it's a little easier. just boot to a dos prompt and type fdisk /mbr

I think I have an NT disk around.

Will it know where to put the mbr?

i'm not familiar with NT. So the XP CD won't boot at all now?

No. That concerns me.

that's weird. it didn't do anything to the bios did it?? you might check those setting.

No, I'm pretty sure the bios is fine. It boots the Suse disk. Why it doesn't boot the XP disk, I have no idea.

btw here is the grub menu, if that helps.

grub/menu.lst
# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Thu Nov 10 00:02:29 EST 2005

color white/blue black/light-gray
default 0
timeout 8
gfxmenu (hd0,6)/boot/message

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 vga=0x31a selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: windows###
title Windows
chainloader (hd1,1)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: floppy###
title Floppy
chainloader (fd0)+1

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- SUSE LINUX 10.0
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda7 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume selinux=0 nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
initrd /boot/initrd

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: 2.6.13-15-default###
title 2.6.13-15-default
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.13-15-default root=/dev/hda7 vga=0x31a selinux=0 resume=/dev/hda6 splash=silent showopts
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.13-15-default

i don't have my suse machine here to compare. i have a similar setup though. i do have a win98 boot disk that has an fdisk program on it. that's what i usually use instead of the xp cd. it's only about 2.5 mb. i think i can rip an .iso of it and send it to you. if you have anyway to burn a cd