reinstalled windows, how do i reconfigure grub?

Pascal Klein 4pascal at tpg.com.au
Sun Aug 28 01:28:56 UTC 2005


On Sun, 28 Aug 2005 10:38 am, Drewcore wrote:
> hi guys... i reinstalled windows on one of the partitions of my drive,
> and now i want to reconfigure grub so that i can still use both
> operating systems. however, my machine only boots into windows now, so
> i'm kinda freaked out. how can i solve this?
>
> drew
> --
> dc .. drewcore.com

This is something that every linux user could do with knowing. Microsoft being 
as kind as they are assume that Windows will, and must be your only operating 
system. Therefore, it kills whatever is on the MBR - Master Boot Record, 
which basically tells where each partition is, and where on each partition, 
if it has, an operating system can booted.

You've either just a) deleted Ubuntu off the drive by installing Windows (it 
would have overwritten it), or b) you've partition correctly, however Windows 
overwrote the MBR and thus you cannot boot Ubuntu.

To fix this you will need to overwrite the Windows boot loader in the MBR and 
put GRUB back on. Try using the livecd, or the install cd just to install the 
boot loader (GRUB). There is a way to do it with the livecd in the command 
line, but it's been a while. Someone on the list will know. :-)

Lesson however - always install Windows first if you want to dual boot. :-)


-- 
Cheerio.
Pascal Klein
Wombat - [http://wombat.nuxified.com]




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