Winodws Wiping Out Linux Grub Booter

Factual Questions
1

I have a dual boot system; the oft-maligned Windows ME on one HD and Red Hat Linux 9 on the other. Because of some damned problem or another, I had to reinstall Win ME but of course, when I did it wiped out the Grub loader which allows you to access the Linux drive. Is there a way of getting this back without having to completely reinstall Linux?

2

Here’s someone providing a solution to someone with the same problem

http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/linuxers/Week-of-Mon-20030630/010937.html

3

There are ways to do this. Unfortunately my experience has only been with LILO. The basic idea is to create a boot disk that will be able to recognize all the partitions on your hard drive(s). You would then set up GRUB on the boot disk to boot into your linux. Once you manage to boot into your linux, you can reset your main GRUB (probably some setup tools in RedHat for that).

How about you look at this page. This looks like it will describe how to do it with Red Hat 9. You have bootable CD for RH9 right?

Sorry I can’t be more help. The way I’ve always done it, is on one of my hard-drives I keep 5 gigs free as scratch space (usually to transfer between linux and ntfs filesystems). If I ever wreck my boot record, I simply install an abbreviated linux version on the scratch space, which will write a new boot loader. Then, once I boot back into the original linux, I reset my original bootloader.

4

I suppose I should be more clear. The 5 gig scratch space is just an empty partition. Because I dual boot between Win2000 and linux, and I want to be able to share data, it’s nice to have a free partition like this which I can format to FAT32 or something. This way of boot recovery, installing to the scratch partition, certainly isn’t the fastest, especially if you don’t have a free partition already. But it is very simple, which is certainly of value. Instead of spending an hour or more figuring out a better method, I just spend 20 minutes clicking “next” and “yes” a few times.

5

Well, that seemed to work. I got back on and was able to at least create a Linux boot disk (make note : do that the FIRST time next time.) I haven’t got the GRUB back in the MBR yet, but it’s only a matter of time now.

Thanks, guys.

6

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Get a boot disk, mount the HD and chroot to it, then re-install grub (I use LILO but I imagine it’s just as easy).

unmount, reboot, remove disk, voila!