Arch Linux

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

SO i ned to reinstall widnows on my windows partition
my partition table looks like
sda1 windows
sda2 swap
sda3 root
sda4 extended
sda5 home
What i dont want to happen is during the instillation of Micro$oft is my bootloader screw up and i cant boot into arch without being able to fix. 
What steps do i ned to take before i install so that I do not have to reinstall arch again ot get the mbr disc correct?

*BUMP**

Last edited by nmodlin (2009-08-04 19:07:06)

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

arkham

Member

From: Stockholm

Registered: 2008-10-26

Posts: 516

Website

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

If you want to reintall windows, it will screw up grub.
Simply reinstall it after installing windows -> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Reinstalling_GRUB

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"I'm Winston Wolfe. I solve problems."

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nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

ok thanks for the info tried this before but could never get my partitiouns to mount correctly

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

musta ruhtinas

Member

Registered: 2009-08-01

Posts: 9

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

I don't think there is anything you can do prior to a Windows installation that will prevent it.
The simplest way I know of to restore GRUB would be to use the Super Grub boot disk from here .

Last edited by musta ruhtinas (2009-08-02 06:50:24)

makimaki

Member

From: Ireland

Registered: 2009-04-02

Posts: 109

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

I don't think there is anything you can do prior to a Windows installation that will prevent it.
The simplest way I know of to restore GRUB would be to use the Super Grub boot disk from here .

+1

Super Grub is your best friend

It got me out of some very unplesant mbr/bootloader problems in the past

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nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

ok i have that on a usb stick but i cant seem to get it to work when I try the different oiptions from super grub it comes to a grub menu with arch and arch fallback but neither work they say they are not found
It says i get ERROR 15 File not found
IT is looking at the wrong partition it is looking at HD (0,2) instead of 3

Last edited by nmodlin (2009-08-02 15:58:23)

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

musta ruhtinas

Member

Registered: 2009-08-01

Posts: 9

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Did you try the instructions from Super Grub's wiki ?
I find it very odd it could not fix grub right away.

Last edited by musta ruhtinas (2009-08-02 17:39:59)

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

yes i tried them and during the reinstallation of grub from GRUB => MBR & !LINUX! (>2) MANUAL |8-) after a few ninutes it gets to running embed and then just stays there for hours

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

ok thanks for the info tried this before but could never get my partitiouns to mount correctly

Forget about super grub for a minute. Did you get windows installed and if so does it boot?  If it does boot, do you see the grub screen at all or just the windows boot loader?

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CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Yes windows boots properly and i have the windows bootloader

Last edited by nmodlin (2009-08-03 00:51:14)

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

perbh

Member

From: Republic of Texas

Registered: 2005-03-04

Posts: 765

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Why don't you just save the MBR (dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 count=1 of=/some/filename), reinstall windows which will screw up the MBR and then use a live cd to put it back again?

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Welel i am sick of reinstalling things. It should be illegal for Mircrosoft to install its bootloader automatically

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Yes windows boots properly and i have the windows bootloader

OK, then reinstalling grub is trivial.  Boot into the live Arch CD. 

# grub
grub> root (hd0.2)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

That should put grub where it needs to be.  Do you know how to add an entry for windows in the /boot/grub/menu.lst?

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CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

No i do not know how to add the entry for windows in grub list  thankyou for the info gonna try now

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.

nmodlin

Member

From: Outer Banks North Carolina USA

Registered: 2009-04-15

Posts: 97

Re: Fixing grub after reinstalling windows on a dual boot system

Ok so it worked why does the wiki have such a hard way to install grub listed

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And God created the Open Source Programming Community, and it was good. Satan retaliated with its evil twin, Windows and thus the battle for good and evil has begun.