I'm screwed... Really bad installation

quantumburnz · 2007-01-16 19:46:54

Ok, so by no means am I a Linux guru of any kind. I have a SATA HD with 3 partitions on it. sda1 is my windows partition, sda2 is linux and sda3 is the swap. When I installed arch, everything went though ok and I think I installed grub to /dev/sda1. However, I ran into problems booting into Arch so I ran through the installation again, this time putting GRUB on /dev/sda. Which should it really be on?

Anyhow, I couldn't get GRUB to work and now my system is really screwed... I can't boot to my Windows XP CD, when I try, it boots from the CD, says 'detecting your hardware ' or whatever and they the screen goes blank after that. I've tried numerous tools on Hiren's boot CD to fix things but to no avail. I must save my Windows partition, what can I do?!

Thanks and hopefully someone can save me from this disaster...

test1000 · 2007-01-16 20:00:04

have you tried INSERT? i think a program called testdisk or somethng on there can replace old partition table.

might be worth to change boot partition order in bios first though, as grub may be working but not booted from.

Mr Green · 2007-01-16 20:04:51

grab a livecd try to fix problem...

does grub start at all?

can you get menu.lst

you may need to chroot in to fix problem

above all remain calm if all else fails backup drive [using a livecd!]

HTH

T-Dawg · 2007-01-16 23:27:44

when you installed grub to /dev/sda1 it probably overwrote the first 512bytes of data on that partition. I would try booting into a live cd and mounting that partition using the -o offset= switch to mount. That will tell it to mount the partition with offset amount of bytes. You can use fdisk to find out at what exact block to that windows partition would be. It may be something like 256 bytes but definitely no more than 512.

quantumburnz · 2007-01-17 07:05:48

test1000 -- I tried the INSERT on the UBCD and it's giving me the following:

LBACACHE: int. STAK nest!? otherss=1253No harddisk found

It looks like it's missing my SATA drive... I'll give the other suggestions a try tomorrow, thanks guys.

About the boot order in the BIOS... I usually set the CD-ROM to boot first in case I have a bootable CD in there and then the HD second, is this a problem? You said to set up the HD to boot first but if you do this, you obviously can't use the Bootable CD, a little confused by what you meant... Thanks.

Mr Green -- What should I do with the livecd to fix the problem? This boot cd test1000 mentioned has something on there I could use, I also have a couple Auditor cds.

Grub starts... it says the following:

GRUB Loading stage1.5.

GRUB loading, please wait...

and dies there... If I boot from the ArchLinux CD and use "arch /dev/sda2 noinitrd ro" I can get into Arch and access /boot/grub/menu.lst. However, I've seen a lot of forums talking about chroot to do things and I don't totally understand what it does or how I would use it...

Thanks Mr. Green

Chris -- still trying to remain calm

Mr Green · 2007-01-17 14:45:24

no problem just a suggestion ... your data is/should be intact on drive livecd would be a way of recovering/backing up

good luck

stingray · 2007-01-17 17:26:12

The new ArchLinux install CD 0.8 Voodoo uses GRUB

I just tested using it to boot to a windows install.

Just edit one of the boot items, one that has 3 lines, I used the last item...
select and then type "e" to edit
select the first line, type "e" to edit
change to "rootnoverify (hd0,0)"
ENTER when done
change the second line to "makeactive"
change the thrid line to "chainloader +1"

it should look like this

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

then type "b" to boot it

it's worth a try...

quantumburnz · 2007-01-17 18:42:30

Thanks for the replies Mr. Green and stingray.

My problem is that I can't get the GRUB menu to come up right now so I'm unable to do what stingray suggests because GRUB just freezes up... Any more suggestions of how I can get GRUB working?

stingray · 2007-01-17 18:46:57

quantumburnz wrote:

Thanks for the replies Mr. Green and stingray.
My problem is that I can't get the GRUB menu to come up right now so I'm unable to do what stingray suggests because GRUB just freezes up... Any more suggestions of how I can get GRUB working?

I was using the GRUB menu from off the install CD. Have you tried that? (if you have the latest install CD) That way it bypasses your none working GRUB menu.

If you had GRUB running off any other CD´s floppy, you could try the same thing...

stingray · 2007-01-17 19:01:32

quantumburnz wrote:

Any more suggestions of how I can get GRUB working?

Do you have any other boot cd´s?

For example: I have an old Ultimate Boot CD www.utimatebootcd.com
using it I can use "Filesystem Tools" "GRUB" "Windows boot"

quantumburnz · 2007-01-18 02:41:36

stingray wrote:

The new ArchLinux install CD 0.8 Voodoo uses GRUB
I just tested using it to boot to a windows install.
Just edit one of the boot items, one that has 3 lines, I used the last item...
select and then type "e" to edit
select the first line, type "e" to edit
change to "rootnoverify (hd0,0)"
ENTER when done
change the second line to "makeactive"
change the thrid line to "chainloader +1"
it should look like this
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
then type "b" to boot it
it's worth a try...

Deffinately was worth a try but all I get is:

    Booting command-list

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

GRUB _

This is interesting and bad at the same time though... When I boot to the GRUB command line and type

root (hd0,0)

it gives me

Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

So I'm guessing that's not a good thing... Any clue what that means?

byte · 2007-01-18 03:16:33

Enter the grub shell and just type: 'root (hd0,' and hit TAB
What's the output?

stingray · 2007-01-18 03:26:36

Don't lose hope yet....

When I do "root (hd0," then press tab
my windows XP ntfs partition shows up the same,

Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

my windows XP fat32 parttition shows up as...

Filesystem type is fat, partition type 0xc

I was trying booting with the GRUB off the CD at work, all on Fat32 p artitions, I'll try it with my ntfs partition and see if it works...

[/quote]

stingray · 2007-01-18 03:37:36

Well, it worked for me booting the ntfs partition. using

rootnoverify (hd0,0) 
makeactive 
chainloader +1

So the only hope I can give is that my drive is good, and the data is good even though it shows up as unknown in grub.

Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

stingray · 2007-01-18 03:47:24

Another thing to try...

Boot your ArchLinux install cd and try to mount the partition
when you get the shell prompt, before you would type /arch/setup

mount  /dev/sda1 /mnt
ls /mnt

Try it and see if you see your data...

quantumburnz · 2007-01-18 05:00:58

Ok, so I just installed the newest Arch, Voodoo. Installation went fine and I installed GRUB on /dev/sda. However, when I boot I still get the same thing where GRUB freezes and says "GRUB loading, please wait..."

As you said, I booted to GRUB from the cd and did 'root (hd0,' and hit tab and this is what I got:

Possible partitions are:
     Partition num: 0, Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7
     Partition num: 1,

and that's it! It looks like it froze trying to read the Arch partition which is on /dev/sda2 and my swap is on /dev/sda3... It doesn't make any sense!

I tried to mount the NTFS partition like you said and I got this:

mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1,
           missing codepage or other error
           In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
           dmesg | tail or so

I did "dmesg | tail" and got this:

NTFS-fs warning (device sda1): is_boot_sector_ntfs(): Invalid boot sector checksum.
NTFS-fs error (device sda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Primary boot sector is invalid.
NTFS-fs error (device sda1): read_ntfs_boot_sector(): Mount option errors=recover not used.  Aborting without trying to recover.
NTFS-fs error (device sda1): ntfs_fill_super(): Not an NTFS volume.

Probably really bad news... I just don't understand why I can't even get Linux working when I reinstall. What would be causing GRUB to freeze up like this? At least if I get Arch working, maybe I can move on to getting my Windows files back...

I got my old Arch Gimmick CD and was able to boot into Voodoo with it so it's got to be a GRUB problem... I tried mounting /dev/sda1 from Voodoo and it says "mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'" what's that all about?

quantumburnz · 2007-01-18 05:34:07

T-Dawg wrote:

when you installed grub to /dev/sda1 it probably overwrote the first 512bytes of data on that partition. I would try booting into a live cd and mounting that partition using the -o offset= switch to mount. That will tell it to mount the partition with offset amount of bytes. You can use fdisk to find out at what exact block to that windows partition would be. It may be something like 256 bytes but definitely no more than 512.

T-Dawg -- I tried what you suggested, I did

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt -t ntfs -o offset=63

but it gave me "mount: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'" bummer...

Mr Green · 2007-01-18 07:28:05

when you boot your system does grub come up on screen?

if you can chroot or boot into your Arch system then reinstall grub [to mbr]

at least get Arch booting ...

quantumburnz · 2007-01-18 07:28:46

So I'm trying to recompile the kernel with NTFS support and first I do 'make menuconfig' and safe the .config file. When I do make, I get this:

scripts/kconfig/conf -s arch/i386/Kconfig
   CHK   include/linux/version.h
   CHK   include/linux/utsrelease.h
scripts/Makefile.build:17: /usr/src/linux-2.6.19-ARCH/init/Makefile: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** No rule to make target '/usr/src/linux-2.6.19-ARCH/init/Makefile'.
 Stop.
make: *** [init] Error 2

What am I doing wrong?

Mr Green · 2007-01-18 07:37:53

I have no ntfs .... try modprobe ntfs then mount -t ntfs <blah>.... I'm sure someone will jump in to tell you if I am wrong...

quantumburnz · 2007-01-18 13:39:33

Mr Green wrote:

I have no ntfs .... try modprobe ntfs then mount -t ntfs <blah>.... I'm sure someone will jump in to tell you if I am wrong...

Sigh... good thought but

FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.16/modules.dep: No such file or directory

Mr Green · 2007-01-18 13:51:12

your kernel is waaaay out of date ....... you need to get Arch up to date first ... do you know how to chroot in fix Arch then take it from there

Hoping someone will jump in before I get into deep water....

byte · 2007-01-18 14:04:23

First, reverse everything you have done regarding the kernel. Just use the default Arch kernel26 package (with vmlinuz26/kernel26.img in menu.lst).

Your dmesg had something about "errors=recover", try to mount sda1 with that.

stingray · 2007-01-18 16:55:27

another idea... gpart http://www.stud.uni-hannover.de/user/76201/gpart/
or something simular.

I've never used it... but you might read up on it.

DESCRIPTION
gpart tries to guess which partitions are on a hard disk.
If the primary partition table has been lost, overwritten
or destroyed the partitions still exist on the disk but
the operating system cannot access them.

stingray · 2007-01-18 17:35:46

I ran accross another idea... (I'm not really doing all this research for you, currently at work I just happen to be playing with doul booting between all kinds of windows & linux installs, school computer lab)

Quote: [url]http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3311[/url] wrote:

"I goofed my MBR and now I can't boot windows!"
Two things that are reported to work:
1)Boot w/ win98 boot floppy, at the a: propmt enter:
fdisk /mbr
2)Boot w/ XP or WIN2k cd into recovery mode and run:
fixmbr

Arch Linux

#1 2007-01-16 19:46:54

I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#2 2007-01-16 20:00:04

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#3 2007-01-16 20:04:51

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#4 2007-01-16 23:27:44

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#5 2007-01-17 07:05:48

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#6 2007-01-17 14:45:24

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#7 2007-01-17 17:26:12

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#8 2007-01-17 18:42:30

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#9 2007-01-17 18:46:57

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#10 2007-01-17 19:01:32

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#11 2007-01-18 02:41:36

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#12 2007-01-18 03:16:33

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#13 2007-01-18 03:26:36

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#14 2007-01-18 03:37:36

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#15 2007-01-18 03:47:24

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#16 2007-01-18 05:00:58

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#17 2007-01-18 05:34:07

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#18 2007-01-18 07:28:05

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#19 2007-01-18 07:28:46

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#20 2007-01-18 07:37:53

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#21 2007-01-18 13:39:33

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#22 2007-01-18 13:51:12

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#23 2007-01-18 14:04:23

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#24 2007-01-18 16:55:27

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

#25 2007-01-18 17:35:46

Re: I'm screwed... Really bad installation

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