Mulit Booting between Linux and XP

[Thierry]

Hello People,

I have XP on my primary HDD and a few month ago installed LInux RH 9 on my second HDD.

Somehow, XP screw up (Hurey!!) ;o) and therefore I had to re-install it.

The problem is now that I can't boot to Linux anymore coz the multi boot that was created when I installed RH is gone.

How can I fix this?

Thanks for your help Guys!!!

Thierry

[prydah]

hope u made a backup START-UP DISKETTE when it asked u to during the linux install....

otherwise have fun reinstalling linux...

:D

[Thierry]

I have made a boot disk but when I boot from it there is a kernel panic n it sits there.

I read there is things that can be done using the dd command but how do i access it in linux???

I really dunt want to reinstall linux plus I want Windows to be in chrge of da booting and not linux...XP to fragile.

No chance to recreate the boot up using the linux RH install CDs?

There must be another solution!

Thierry

[prydah]

linux has to be in charge of da booting process and besides XP is not so fragile as u may think...

unless someone else has a better solution, it looks like u're only choice is to reinstall linux so that it can rewrite its boot process onto u're hard drive's master boot record and make another start-up boot diskette just in case while reinstalling.

[Thierry]

OK, I found out a way to boot on Linux even if one did not make a boot floppy disk!!!

U just need to boot from the CD (the Linux one) and to pretend to do an upgrade.

Then after skipping the unwilling steps it will ask you to create a boot disk to which you say yes obviously!!! ;o)

Now here you go you can boot to Linux!!

Hope this will be helpfull to others.
Thierry

[The Analog Kid]

You can also download a Live CD like Knoppix or even the Gentoo Live Stage 1 CD and just chroot in your partition that Linux is installed on and reinstall Grub or Lilo. Its quite an effective way of fixing things in Linux if you can't boot into it.

[Max3D]

Kernel panic from a boot floppy usually means it can't find the root linux partition so it freeze up, try something like this if its a lilo boot disk

boot: root=/dev/hdb?, replace the ? with the valid # partition, (assuming your linux is sitting on IDE disk2 slave cable, if its another master drive it will be hdc, watch the kernel boot screen to determine which before the panic), you can also get into linux with a rescue cd such as RedHat's bootable CD1, once your in you can rerun lilo and get your dual boot back, hope this helps, it saved my arse many times, reinstalling suks.

[lunarg]

Originally posted by prydah
linux has to be in charge of da booting process...

That's not true. With a dd command you can easily allow windows to control the booting:

1) write lilo to the boot sector of the linux partition (rather than the mbr)

2) while in linux:
dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/floppy/boot.lnx bs=1 count=512
(where hda2 is your linux partition, and /floppy is a mounted floppy)

3) copy the boot.lnx file in Windows in your C:\
directory and add the following line to boot.ini:
C:\boot.lnx="Linux"

That should do it...

[jpaulo]

I agree with The Analog Kid, just burn a copy of Gentoo Live cd, boot it and follow the instructions on /mnt/cdrom/install.html to chroot and reinstall lilo or grub.