Sticky problem with GRUB

[Hard Ball]

I don't know if any of you remember my last thread about troubles with WinXP file system corruption; thanks again to all those who replied.

But to cut the story short, I have a dual boot system, but WinXP file system (NTSF) was corrupted on the entire Win boot partition, so I had to eventually reinstall.

So I did that last night, and naturally, Windows install overwrote the MBR that supported the bootloader; Windows was working fine at that point, and I attempted to get dual boot going again, wanting to avoid reinstalling Linux (that would be way too much to backup.)

So I did grub-install and all the rest of the sha-bang with a Fedora recovery disk, and GRUB worked once again, and Linux booted up as normal. But when I tried to boot into the freshly installed Win OS, it gives me the error message something to the effect of:
NTLDR files missing

So I copied the \i386\ntldr.exe file back into D:
(another point is that since Windows crashed, one of the NTSF data partitions has become C:, and the original boot partitionis now D:\, not wanting to wipe any data clear, I asked the installation to be done on D:\)
And now it tells me that boot.ini is missing.

At this point, I have tried a lot of different things, and don't really know where to go from here.

Does anyone have a solution to the current problem, without having to reinstall either OS?

If not, does anyone have a solution that allows me to reinstall Windows again, but in the process of reloading GRUB safely after Win installation, not change anything so as to allow windows still to boot normally.

the boot.cfg file I have is:

default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,2)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora Core (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp ro root=LABEL=/ ide=nodma rhgb
 quiet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4smp.img
title Fedora Core-up (2.6.11-1.1369_FC4)
        root (hd0,2)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4 ro root=LABEL=/ ide=nodma rhgb qu
iet
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.11-1.1369_FC4.img
title Windows XP Professional
        rootnoverify (hd1,0)
        map (hd0) (hd1)
        map (hd1) (hd0)
##      rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        savedefault
        chainloader +1
        makeactive
title Other
        rootnoverify (hd2,0)
        chainloader +1

Thanks in advance;
--HB

 

[chusteczka]

Originally posted by: Hard Ball

title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
## rootnoverify (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1
makeactive

It seems you may have gotten a bit mixed up with your drive and partition. Try this as a replacement for the above quoted section.


title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


Actually, from your description involving installation onto the D:\ partition, I would expect the following to work.


title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1



These two examples assume both Windows and Linux are installed on the same master drive, hd0.

I am further assuming your windows install was performed correctly and the main problem is finding the correct partition with GRUB's drive and partitioning number system.

Drive 1 is hd0
Drive 2 is hd1, just like an array.

First partition ( C:\ ) is (hd0,0)
Second partition ( D:\ ) is (hd0,1)
Third partition with linux is (hd0,2)

 

[Hard Ball]

Originally posted by: chusteczka

Originally posted by: Hard Ball

title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
## rootnoverify (hd0,0)
savedefault
chainloader +1
makeactive

It seems you may have gotten a bit mixed up with your drive and partition. Try this as a replacement for the above quoted section.


title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


Actually, from your description involving installation onto the D:\ partition, I would expect the following to work.


title Windows XP Professional
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1



These two examples assume both Windows and Linux are installed on the same master drive, hd0.

I am further assuming your windows install was performed correctly and the main problem is finding the correct partition with GRUB's drive and partitioning number system.

Drive 1 is hd0
Drive 2 is hd1, just like an array.

First partition ( C:\ ) is (hd0,0)
Second partition ( D:\ ) is (hd0,1)
Third partition with linux is (hd0,2)

Thanks for the reply,

actualy, the reason I remapped the drives was because the Win Boot partition is (hd1,0), while the linux boot was (hd0,2), so they are on different physical drives. When I had both linux and windows working fine, the bootloader was on hd0, so that I had to switch the order of the disks in order to get Windows in the first 6GB or whatever of the MBR.

Let me know of any other suggestion.
--HB