My laptop is WinXP, and I had Linux on it. I've only tried the Linux a couple of times, since the shared FAT partition I hoped would enable me to work with both OSs always came back corrupted in XP's eyes.

GRUB is (was) the loader

The first 500MB is the first partition, which is FAT.

Stupidly, last night I tried to run CONVERT on it, to make it NTFS, and then changed my mind before (I thought) it had done anything.

Now it won't load. All I can get is the GRUB command screen, and I know *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there. Or, if I use the WinXP recovery disk, I can get into the woop-de-doop management console (i.e. a crippled DOS box) and I *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there.

The C:\boot.ini file is still ok.

If anyone knows how to tell the MBR or whatever to "go windows" and see C:\boot.ini, I would be **massively** grateful.

Many thanks in advance

Cheers

Matthew

I know this won't be a helpful comment at this point, but over and over I hear about the grief people have from running multiboot systems. What I do is just buy a cheapo extra box, and then use a KVM switch. It has a nice side effect that you can run them simultaneously.

"Walter Bright" <newshound@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:dru2fi$1lkb$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> I know this won't be a helpful comment at this point,

Correct. ;-)

> but over and over I
> hear about the grief people have from running multiboot systems. What I do
> is just buy a cheapo extra box, and then use a KVM switch. It has a nice
> side effect that you can run them simultaneously.

I do have such a thing, which allows me to multipleplex between 1 (5-way multi-boot, all Windows, no dramas) desktop, server, Linux box and Mac OS-X laptop.

The problem was encountered on my laptop. I'd installed the Linux boot over a year ago and abandoned attempts to use it. It's just that I was stupid enough to start messing with the boot partition on a machine on which there was uncomitted data - code and three chapters! - while in the last two-week high-pressure phase of trying to get my book finished.

Not smart, eh?

:-(

Matthew wrote:
> My laptop is WinXP, and I had Linux on it. I've only tried the Linux a
> couple of times, since the shared FAT partition I hoped would enable me to
> work with both OSs always came back corrupted in XP's eyes.
> 
> GRUB is (was) the loader
> 
> The first 500MB is the first partition, which is FAT.
> 
> Stupidly, last night I tried to run CONVERT on it, to make it NTFS, and then
> changed my mind before (I thought) it had done anything.
> 
> Now it won't load. All I can get is the GRUB command screen, and I know
> *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there. Or, if I use the
> WinXP recovery disk, I can get into the woop-de-doop management console
> (i.e. a crippled DOS box) and I *nothing* about how to get back my partition
> from there.
> 
> The C:\boot.ini file is still ok.
> 
> If anyone knows how to tell the MBR or whatever to "go windows" and see
> C:\boot.ini, I would be **massively** grateful.
> 
> Many thanks in advance
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Matthew
> 
> 


I assume you no longer care about the Linux install.

Can you try going into the the Windows Recovery Console and using the "fixmbr c:" command?

Here's a site that explains some of the commands available in the console:

> http://www.windowsnetworking.com/j_helmig/wxprcons.htm


In the long run, it may be safer and easier to run a linux distribution in Vmware's free vmplayer tool.  That way you can run Linux from your windows desktop. It's a quick and effective way to work with Linux these days, especially if you don't want to compromise your partition setup with a dual OS install.

Hope that helps,

John

Walter Bright wrote:
> I know this won't be a helpful comment at this point, but over and over I hear about the grief people have from running multiboot systems. What I do is just buy a cheapo extra box, and then use a KVM switch. It has a nice side effect that you can run them simultaneously. 

I'm coming to believe VMWare is an excellent low-cost alternative.  And it will be even more attractive once Intel's hardware VM support and dual cores becomes more prevalent.

As for Matthew's problem... my first thought was "fdisk /mbr" to rewrite the boot record, but I think MS left fdisk out of XP.  Here's a link that describes how to restore the boot record another way, along with a few other tips:

http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-10877-6031733.html


Sean

Matthew wrote:
> 
> The problem was encountered on my laptop. I'd installed the Linux boot over
> a year ago and abandoned attempts to use it. It's just that I was stupid
> enough to start messing with the boot partition on a machine on which there
> was uncomitted data - code and three chapters! - while in the last two-week
> high-pressure phase of trying to get my book finished.

So long as you can boot from something and the disk hasn't been set on fire, getting data back typically isn't a problem.  Worst case you lose an afternoon reinstalling Windows to get at the data.  Not that it's an afternoon you can afford to waste, but better than rewriting three chapters :-)


Sean

Booting from an XP CD into the recovery console and trying 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot' commands might be useful.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx

See also fixboot and diskpart links on that page. The fixXXX commands don't seem to be available in normal XP console, but only on the recovery console.

If you can't get anything to boot, pulling the HD and getting it into another machine to recover is probably easier than trying to reinstall without killing data.

I've had very good results with GetDataBack from www.runtime.org - not free, but I've used it and it does work - especially on systems which just have a dead MBR and all the data is intact.

Matthew wrote:
> My laptop is WinXP, and I had Linux on it. I've only tried the Linux a
> couple of times, since the shared FAT partition I hoped would enable me to
> work with both OSs always came back corrupted in XP's eyes.
> 
> GRUB is (was) the loader
> 
> The first 500MB is the first partition, which is FAT.
> 
> Stupidly, last night I tried to run CONVERT on it, to make it NTFS, and then
> changed my mind before (I thought) it had done anything.
> 
> Now it won't load. All I can get is the GRUB command screen, and I know
> *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there. Or, if I use the
> WinXP recovery disk, I can get into the woop-de-doop management console
> (i.e. a crippled DOS box) and I *nothing* about how to get back my partition
> from there.
> 
> The C:\boot.ini file is still ok.
> 
> If anyone knows how to tell the MBR or whatever to "go windows" and see
> C:\boot.ini, I would be **massively** grateful.
> 
> Many thanks in advance
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Matthew
> 
> 

Alex Stevenson wrote:
> Booting from an XP CD into the recovery console and trying 'fixmbr' and 'fixboot' commands might be useful.
> 
> http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/bootcons_fixmbr.mspx
> 
> 
> See also fixboot and diskpart links on that page. The fixXXX commands don't seem to be available in normal XP console, but only on the recovery console.
> 
> If you can't get anything to boot, pulling the HD and getting it into another machine to recover is probably easier than trying to reinstall without killing data.
> 
> I've had very good results with GetDataBack from www.runtime.org - not free, but I've used it and it does work - especially on systems which just have a dead MBR and all the data is intact.
> 

AFAIK, corrupted MBR doesn't mean that all data on the partitions is lost - MBR is just a static area for boot loader code. Unless that convert-utility has messed up with the file system, recovery is easy. You can put in a Linux live-cd and run grub-install or use an advanced 3rd party boot loader or simple install the MS boot loader using the recovery CD.

-- 
Jari-Matti

Can you remove the laptop hard-drive, and plug it into another machine as a second disk? You'll need a 2.5" to IDE adapter cable to hook it up to a desktop machine ... the drive does not need to be bootable for doing that, and you say the files appear to be intact. This would at least allow you to make a backup of your work.

- Kris


"Matthew" <matthew@hat.stlsoft.dot.org> wrote in message news:dru0dd$1k15$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> My laptop is WinXP, and I had Linux on it. I've only tried the Linux a couple of times, since the shared FAT partition I hoped would enable me to work with both OSs always came back corrupted in XP's eyes.
>
> GRUB is (was) the loader
>
> The first 500MB is the first partition, which is FAT.
>
> Stupidly, last night I tried to run CONVERT on it, to make it NTFS, and
> then
> changed my mind before (I thought) it had done anything.
>
> Now it won't load. All I can get is the GRUB command screen, and I know
> *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there. Or, if I use the
> WinXP recovery disk, I can get into the woop-de-doop management console
> (i.e. a crippled DOS box) and I *nothing* about how to get back my
> partition
> from there.
>
> The C:\boot.ini file is still ok.
>
> If anyone knows how to tell the MBR or whatever to "go windows" and see C:\boot.ini, I would be **massively** grateful.
>
> Many thanks in advance
>
> Cheers
>
> Matthew
>
> 

No, but that's not a prob anyway, as I always do multi-partitions, and so all the essential work is on the H: drive.

So the work's never really *gone*, just a couple of days of installation away. Sort of good news, of course, but not really

"Kris" <fu@bar.com> wrote in message news:dru61f$1o51$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Can you remove the laptop hard-drive, and plug it into another machine as
a
> second disk? You'll need a 2.5" to IDE adapter cable to hook it up to a desktop machine ... the drive does not need to be bootable for doing that, and you say the files appear to be intact. This would at least allow you
to
> make a backup of your work.
>
> - Kris
>
>
> "Matthew" <matthew@hat.stlsoft.dot.org> wrote in message news:dru0dd$1k15$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> > My laptop is WinXP, and I had Linux on it. I've only tried the Linux a couple of times, since the shared FAT partition I hoped would enable me
to
> > work with both OSs always came back corrupted in XP's eyes.
> >
> > GRUB is (was) the loader
> >
> > The first 500MB is the first partition, which is FAT.
> >
> > Stupidly, last night I tried to run CONVERT on it, to make it NTFS, and
> > then
> > changed my mind before (I thought) it had done anything.
> >
> > Now it won't load. All I can get is the GRUB command screen, and I know *nothing* about how to get back my partition from there. Or, if I use
the
> > WinXP recovery disk, I can get into the woop-de-doop management console
> > (i.e. a crippled DOS box) and I *nothing* about how to get back my
> > partition
> > from there.
> >
> > The C:\boot.ini file is still ok.
> >
> > If anyone knows how to tell the MBR or whatever to "go windows" and see C:\boot.ini, I would be **massively** grateful.
> >
> > Many thanks in advance
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Matthew
> >
> >
>
>