Arch Linux

mascolo99

Member

Registered: 2010-04-08

Posts: 8

Grub problem when finishing installation

Well my pc is a compaq 755 with 120GB,  the disk had windows xp(in sda1), and fedora. But one day a friend of mine recomended arch, so I installed (really great the ncurses setup, no gui pretty good!), erase the fedora linux partitions because I was usisng to test it, and the installation was good, I reboot I had GRUB with windows xp and archlinux working.

But yesterday I upgrade GRUB to GRUB-GFX, I make a pacman, and when I was making grub-install /dev/sda the pc get stuck, so I have to reboot.

When rebooting the grub, was bad, have only the consol grub, so I enter with the live cd, make the menu.lst reboot and have Archlinux working! but windows xp not!, when I hit the option it says error 18.

Here are my disk information I dont know what is w95 LBA partition ??

[root@myhost mascolo99]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        2550    20482843+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            2551       10733    65729947+   f  W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3           10734       14259    28322595   83  Linux
/dev/sda4           14260       14593     2682855   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5            2551       10702    65480908+   7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6           10703       10733      248976   83  Linux

and
                         Disk Drive: /dev/sda
                  Size: 120034123776 bytes, 120.0 GB
         Heads: 255   Sectors per Track: 63   Cylinders: 14593

   Name       Flags    Part Type FS Type        [Label]       Size (MB)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
   sda1       Boot      Primary  NTFS           [^B]           20974.47
   sda5                 Logical  NTFS           [^G]           67052.49
   sda6                 Logical  Linux ext3                      254.99
   sda3                 Primary  Linux ext3                    29002.34
   sda4                 Primary  Linux swap / Solaris           2747.25

mascolo99

Member

Registered: 2010-04-08

Posts: 8

Re: Grub problem when finishing installation

I know that my first partition should be /boot and have less than 200mb, but what you recomend? I can boot even a Windows xp installation disk, it's get stuck, I don't know why.

Thanks in advance

toad

Member

From: if only I knew

Registered: 2008-12-22

Posts: 1,775

Website

Re: Grub problem when finishing installation

Hm, there is plenty of documentation concerning grub and in the end it all makes sense. Have you read the wiki? http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB

I am not sure what grub error 18 is, but google will provide the answer. In any case grub just has to point in the right direction, so that is your starting point - have a look at your menu.lst

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never trust a toad...
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Ber

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 80

Website

Re: Grub problem when finishing installation

Try this : http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/GRU … Hard_Drive

EDIT : I read it very quicly, not sure it is your solution (but the title matches quite well)

Last edited by Ber (2010-04-09 08:53:03)

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V=RI sweet V=RI

mascolo99

Member

Registered: 2010-04-08

Posts: 8

Re: Grub problem when finishing installation

Hey I try to reinstall the arch, but when I put the Grub install option, It fails to mount the partitions so it do not install it.

I guess that the MBR information broke or have same problem on the partition table, because dmesg gave me that the NTFS partition (windows) was bad. And I cant reinstall windows beacuse it gets stuck I guess beacause the bad NTFS partition or table.

I really don´t know what was the problem, why the grub does not install on /dev/sda o /dev/sda1, I guess that when I put grub-install /dev/sda and it get frozen, broke some disk information.

Finally because I had no so important information on fedora and windows, I decide to do all the partition from zero, and reinstall arch and windows.

Well I reinstall and put grub-install and no frozen, so I have grub-gfx installed.

Really I do not know why grub didnt want to install, if any knows I acept opinions.

The only change I done is I put /boot to ext2 (as says on the wiki) and before I made it ext3 when have the problems.