[NTLUG:Discuss] grub loader messing with my head

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2004 at 11:12:28AM -0500, David Evans wrote:
> Okay here is a good one.
> fellow employee asked me to load suse 9.1 onto a usb external hd so he 
> would not have ot do anything to his xp home install. He has a compaq 
> presario 2100 laptop.
> 
> So I said yea we can do that..
> So the install goes well and everything works except his laptop will not 
> boot unless the usb external drive is hooked up to the computer. 
> Apparently suse changed the location of his master boot record and i 
> need to change it back so windowos will boot off of itself again without 
> the external hd.

SUSE installed grub to the master boot record, and grub is looking
for the external drive (the linux partition) to find the configuration
information it needs to boot.

You can still boot to windows -- assuming that windows is on the
first partition of the first hard disk (where it almost always is),
do the following from the grub> prompt:

   grub> rootnoverify (hd0,0)
   grub> makeactive
   grub> chainloader +1
   grub> boot

This should get back to windows.  You can then restore the MBR from
windows -- but doing so will also largely eliminate your ability to boot
to the linux installation on the external usb.   

You might also try booting to linux and installing LILO instead of
grub (or reinstalling linux with LILO).  Normally I prefer grub but
in this instance LILO might be able to handle it better.

Pm
--------------
Patrick R. Michaud, Ph.D., RHCE #808002519807115
Web:   http://www.pmichaud.com
Email: pmichaud at pobox.com