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Linux newb!

S

skypilot

Golden Member
I've been using linux now for a little over a week (Knoppix). I've been learning more and more, so I can finally stop using XP, and just today I began to play around w/ partitioning.

However, the last time I booted my computer, it said "Error loading operating system" after POST. This is a dell dimension 4600.

I am fairly sure that all I was doing was on /dev/hdb, so I don't think I screwed with the partition table on /dev/hda, which is where I boot from. Is there any way I made /dev/hdb the primary boot drive on accident, and if so, how do I fix this?

 
When you say 'playing around with partitioning' what do you mean? To be honest I'm probably not going to be able to answer your question but I know enough to know what the person who can answer it is going to ask next... 😛
 
I was trying to fdisk a secondary hard drive (/dev/hdb), create a logical volume group with that partition in it, then build an ext3 filesystem and mount that filesystem in /mnt/hdb1.

I restarted my computer, and here I am. I had some fairly cool configs set up, so I'd hate to have to re-install everything.
 
Well ok.

If the configs are the most important then you should be able to mount the harddrive in Knoppix or whatever and copy the configurations to a safe place and reformat and reinstall if everything is too messed up.

If you can't get into the harddrive to even cfdisk it or anything like that them maybe you knocked loose a power wire or a IDE cable is loose?

But if you want to save the system, which should be possible...

"Error loading operating system"
Click to expand...

This is before any bootloader right? Like this is a error you BIOS is spitting out.. as if there is nothing there?

Do you have Windows installed on it? Normaly it would go to 'grub' first and then you'd select your OS, right? But now it's not even getting to the bootloader...

Well double check that the BIOS is configured correctly and that it has the proper boot order selected.
Then double check to make sure that you can access the drive from a knoppix boot cdrom or something like that.

If it turns out the bootloader is just messed up and that all your systems are still intact then..
To get windows working without Linux then use the recovery console to 'fixmbr'

To get Linux working again you need to boot up from the knoppix cdrom, setup a chroot environment (details later), and then reinstall the bootloader.


Probably still would be a very good idea at this point to back up important files and configs you want to save as soon as you can access your drive in any way. Always pays to be safe.
 
It means that it can't find an OS on the first hard disk, I'm guessing that you accidentally did something to hda that you mean to do to hdb. Grab a LiveCD and see what the disks look like in there.
 
Well i know last time i had to resize my NTFS partition to install linux, the partitioner encountered an error. Long story short it destroyed my NTFS partition and i got that exact same message.

If possible pop that drive into another PC as a secondary HDD and see if it shows up. If it does your data is safe. If not you better dig out you windows install cds.
 
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