Problems with mandriva installation

[grindboy]

Installed mandriva over fedora core 6 cause I don't like FC6 but Mandriva hasn't come up in the boot loader and it still says fedora core 6, when I try to boot FC6 it comes up with:

Booting 'Fedora Core(2.6.18-1.2798.fc6)'

root (hd0,4)

Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type is 0x83

Kernal /vmlinux-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 ro root=/dev/volgroup00/logvol00 rhgb quiet

Error 15: file not found

Press any key to continue

Thankfully what evers gone wrong hasnt gone anywhere near my windows vista partition so I can still use my pc. If there's no easy way to fix this then can you instead tell me how to remove linux from my system (inluding grub).

Cheers

[devils casper]

did you change anything in Boot Loader section during Mandriva Installation?

[grindboy]

No I left all the bootloader stuff as default

[devils casper]

in that case, Mandriva Installation wasn't successful. installer has missed GRUB installation somehow or you have installed GRUB in boot sector of / (root) partition.

boot up from Mandriva from DVD, mount its root partition ( /boot, if you created it ) and post the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

[grindboy]

How do I do that? (I should have explained from the begining that I'm almost a compleet noob when it comes to linux)

[devils casper]

boot up from Mandriva Installation DVD and select Rescue System.
select Re-install Boot Loader in next Menu. if it throws any error, Select Mount Your Partitions Under /mnt and Go to Console.
execute this

less /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

post output here.

[grindboy]

Ok will do cheers

[grindboy]

Hi guys sorry for not getting back to you sooner but I've had a flurry of a-level exams and haven't had time to even think about computers let alone try and fix my installation of mandriva.

Ok I did what you asked and this is what was returned:

/mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst: No such file or directory [root@rescue/]#

Dunno whats wrong but I saw an option to reinstall the windows boot loader. If I did that and then wiped the linux partition using vista, then reinstalled mandriva using the "install on free space on windows partition" would that solve the problem?

[devils casper]

you booted up in Rescue Mode and correct path is

less /boot/grub/menu.lst

try to re-install GRUB.

grub-install /dev/hda

if your harddisk is SATA, replace hda with sda.
in case, it doesn't work post the contents of menu.lst file here.

If I did that and then wiped the linux partition using vista, then reinstalled mandriva using the "install on free space on windows partition" would that solve the problem?

it should sort out the problem but i suggest you to post menu.lst here before re-installing. its easy to fix this problem.

[grindboy]

Ok then... Did what you said and just got more errors! GRRR! LOL

less /boot/grub/menu.lst

gave out another

No such file or directory

and

grub-install /dev/hda

gave out

mkdir: cannot create directory '/boot': File exists

so... erm... what do I do now?