Grub set up

[Gary W. Swearingen]

"Richard E. Barmann" <reb68 at bellsouth.net> writes:

> I tried to partition these correctly as to save my data and banking records 
> but fear I have lost them anyway. I did not format anything but the swap file 
> but do not see my records at this time. But that is for another day. 

I haven't tried to understand your situation well, but...

Your partitions are probably OK, so don't worry yet, unless you
installed over them.  Messing with MBR and grub should cause no
permanent damage, thought there's always exceptions.  Bad fstab
might be risker as with a wrong swap partition, I guess.

Few, if any, know how to boot Win off anything but primary master, so
you should set that right, after doing what you can with the current
setup.  Use the current setup or a live CD, and make a floppy that
boots grub, if you have floppy.  Else you can run grub from live CD.

Get grub's command line and poke around.  You type in a partial
command line with just the first part of a disk ID (eg, "root ("), and
hit "tab" and it will show you all valid possibilites.  Use "root"
command to pick a partition and then use "find /" (another partial
command) and tab and it will show you the files in "/".  Etc.  You can
usually determine what's what this way.  Proper names, etc.  Then boot
up a Linux off HD or live CD and fix your /etc/fstab.  You might at
this time boot Linux again from grub command line, using new
/etc/fstab (or not).  Fix menu.lst and maybe install grub bootloader
again, if it's not on the first disk.  Reboot to test.