Grub

[BenLi]

Hey all,

I recently reinstalled windows, and now, my machine boots in windows every time instead of showing the GRUB screen. Has anyone ever had this problem before?

[Clayton]

did you install Windows after you installed (assuming) Ubuntu? If you did, it's probably just easier to get a plugin to read ext2/3 partitions, grab anything you need off there, and re-install your OSes (Windows first, then Linux).

[rdrake]

Windows installs its boot loader every time it installs whether you like it or not. I would recommend booting up the Ubuntu LiveCD and running a grub shell from there. You can then reinstall the grub boot loader and everything should work as before.

How you do that would depend on your setup. You need to know your partitions fairly well.

[BenLi]

if I simply installed Ubuntu again, would that fix the issue?

[rdrake]

BenLi @ Thu Jun 21, 2007 5:47 pm wrote:

if I simply installed Ubuntu again, would that fix the issue?

It would.

[Dan]

Windows XP and up lets you edit that boot loader so you could get it to give the option to boot to your linux partion.

An easyer way tho whould be to get a boot disk for your linux distro and then fix it from the linux side.

If you do not care about the linux partion, you could just reinstall it to fix it but you could lose all your files on the linux side.

[neufelni]

I think the easiest solution to your problem is just simply change the Windows boot.ini file. Just add your linux partition under the operating systems part. Take a look at this link.

[BenLi]

Well it wouldn't be a huge issue to reinstall the linux side...
however, I'm interested in the boot.ini solution. After reading the guide i'm still unsure about how to go about editing the boot.ini for my computer

like at this line

"[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Media Center Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect"

what would I add for my Feisty?

[neufelni]

Take a look at this link, and this one. Basically what you need to do is copy the boot sector from your linux partition to a floppy disk or something. You do this usng the dd comand:

dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/mnt/floppy/linux.bin bs=512 count=1

You'd just have to replace /dev/hda2 with the right partition if it's different and /mnt/floppy/linux.bin to a different directory if you want the boot sector copied elsewhere.
I think the way you'd have to do this is mount your linux partition from the live cd and then run the dd command, restart into Windows and copy the linux.bin file to C:\linux.bin. Then you simply add the line c:\linux.bin="Linux" to the end of your boot.ini file.

Another thing you could look into is BootPart. I believe that it basically does the same thing as the dd command, just from within Windows.

I hope this info helps you, and good luck.

[md]

You could always re-install grub. if you have a bootable CD with grub on it it's pretty simple.

I don't remember exactly how of hand; but I'm sure it's online somewhere (this is not a new problem) and it's fairly easy to figure out on your own.

[neufelni]

I found instructions for that here. It looks like that is likely the easiest way.

[rizzix]

Yea I was just going to recommend reinstalling grub. If your ubuntu install cd behaves like a live-cd its even easier. (I know archlinux does )

In ArchLinux you basically run a live cd and run an installer in it to install the os onto your hard disk. I think all OS installations should be likewise. It makes troubleshooting a lot easier.