Recovering GRUB after XP reinstallation

[sirdj]

Hi,
I had Xp and Ubuntu 6.06 installed on my Acer laptop.

Recently had to re-install Xp, however Linux was left untouched. But now I cant get into Linux anymore as I have lost the GRUB.

I am now trying to recover GRUB using the instructions on
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows
(Using the Alternate/Install CD and Overwriting the Windows bootloader)
Steps pasted below

1. Boot your computer with the Ubuntu CD
2. Go through the installation process until you reach "[!!!] Disk Partition"
3. Select Manual Partition
4. Mount your appropriate linux partions:
* /
* /boot
* swap
* ...
5. DO NOT FORMAT THEM.
6. Finish the manual partition
7. Say "Yes" when it asks you to save the changes
8. It will give you errors saying that "the system couldn't install ....." after that
9. Ignore them, keep select "continue" until you get back to the Ubuntu installation menu
10. Jump to "Install Grub ...."
11. Once it is finished, just restart your computer

without any success. I cant seem to get GRUB installed again. Can anyone please help?

I seem to run into trouble when trying to mount the linux partition drives

I have 3 partitions of 20 GB each.
XP is on C:\
Kubuntu on E:\

At the end of my initial installation I found that E:\ was divided into 2 parts of 9.49 GB, with kubuntu on one of them(windows shows E:\ to be only 9.49GB)

the following drives are shown in the drive partitioning menu

SCSI2 (0,0,0) (sda) - 60.0 GB ATA ST960821A
#1 primary 20.0 GB B K fat32 /media/sda1
#5 logical 20.0 GB K fat32 /media/sda5
#6 logical 10.2 GB K fat32 /media/sda6
#7 logical 435.9 MB F swap swap
#3 primary 9.4 GB K ext3 /media/sda3


So as per me my linux drives should be #7(swap) and #3(sda3)
however when I select these drives and go through steps 5-9 and try to install GRUB(step 10 - jump to Install grub) gets me back to drive partitioning. and no progress can be made further.

can anyone let me know where I am going wrong? Please Help.

[Rog131]

Re: Recovering GRUB after XP reinstallation

Maybe this helps:

Start kubuntu from cd. (Here using: kubuntu dapper cd)
(This is same as Using the Ubuntu Desktop/Live CD https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows)

Choose:Start Kubuntu in safe graphic mode

No need to mount.

In the konsole:

:~$sudo grub

Checking where is /boot/grub/stage1

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd2,0)

In this example (my machine) it is in (hd2,0) (=sda1, it's third drive: hda, hdb, sda).

Note from /1/

2 Naming convention

The partition numbers are counted from zero, not from one.

and

GRUB does not distinguish IDE from SCSI - it simply counts the drive numbers from zero, regardless of their type.

Tell grub it.

grub>root (hd2,0)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

Putting grub into first disk mbr.

grub>setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 16 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 d (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd2,0)/boot/grub/stage
2 /boot/grub/menu.lst"... succeeded

From/1/

This command will install the GRUB boot loader on the Master Boot Record (MBR) of the first drive. If you want to put GRUB into the boot sector of a partition instead of putting it in the MBR, specify the partition into which you want to install GRUB:

grub> setup (hd0,0)

Quitting:

grub>quit

/1/ GNU GRUB Manual 0.97
http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html