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Operating Systems => Linux and UNIX => Topic started by: rtgwbmsr on 14 July 2002, 17:37

Title: MBR Repair - Help!
Post by: rtgwbmsr on 14 July 2002, 17:37

Help! On my PC, I have 2 HHDs, one with Windows, and a smaller one with Linux (Using GRUB Bootloader). I want to take out the second drive, and put in a larger one. Afterward, I want to install Mandrake on it. The problem is, after I remove my second drive, I can't boot to anything! It just sits there, with a blinking cursor. If I put the original drive back in, everything works fine. I'm pretty sure it's the bootloader, but what do I do to it?

Title: MBR Repair - Help!
Post by: Calum on 14 July 2002, 20:20

what bootloader are you using? if you want, you can write your master boot record to only boot from your windows partition, so long as you have windows installed already.

to do this, you make a dos bootdisk (you need to go into 'add/remove programs' in the control panel to do this for some reason, not sure if you can do this with winP, i heard something about it not being an option anymore...) anyway, once you have a dos startup disk, and you could download one i suppose, try bootdisk.com i think has a few, if you can't get windows to make one...

Anyway, once you have that disk, boot from it by atsrting your machine with the floppy in the drive, having made sure that your BIOS knows to look for an OS on the floppy before it looks on the hard drive, then once you see a DOS prompt, type 'fdisk /mbr' and bingo, you get one boring windows only type master boot record. You can now do all the drive changing and reinstalling of things that you like.

Hope this is what you were after...

Title: MBR Repair - Help!
Post by: TheQuirk on 15 July 2002, 03:29

This happends to alot of people for some reason! Sometimes it's actually your BIOS, because it checks if both of your hard drives are there. Try fooling around with it.

Title: MBR Repair - Help!
Post by: voidmain on 15 July 2002, 07:59

You also may have to change the jumper on the first drive after removing the second drive (if it's set to master, you may have to set it to CS or remove the jumper depending on the drive).

Title: MBR Repair - Help!
Post by: LorKorub on 16 July 2002, 14:02

They have bootdisks ready for download at http://www.nospin.com. (http://www.nospin.com.)  They've got pretty much all of the $hitblows disks you could possibly need.

I don't know if they have XPiss disks though.  I haven't been there in a while, and I don't feel like   browsing to a M$ support page ever again.