restore grub

[Mumia W.]

On 08/15/2008 06:58 AM, James Takac wrote:
> Hi Karl
> 
> On Friday 15 August 2008 21:16:56 Karl Larsen wrote:
>> David Fox wrote:
>>> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 5:09 PM, Linda Vest Castanos
>>> <dcastanos at snowcrest.net>
>>>
>>>> I'm not a Ubuntu-Linux guru and the commands below would work for ME,
>>>> which is from the link above.  I seem to lose my MBR approx twice a
>>>> year.  (big hassle)
>>> Here's another link that might be helpful :
>>>
>>> http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/SuperGrubDiskPage.html#17
>>>
>>> although it does not specifically mention what exactly error 17 is but
>>> I'd assume you somehow hosed your grub info. This web page touts a
>>> "super grub disk" but there are other methods, including using your
>>> own linux live cd, system rescue cd, possibly manual editing of the
>>> mbr with grub.
>>>
>>> I haven't had to do this specifically because I only single boot, I
>>> almost never have another OS on the system, and I never had Windows
>>>
>>> :).
>>     I think this user must re-load Windows about once a year. When you
>> do this windows writes it's boot message in the Main Boot Record (MBR)
>> and grub is broken. To fix this you need to re-load grub at the MBR and
>> it will be good until you re-load windows again.
>>
>>
>> Karl
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> 	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
>> 	Linux User
>> 	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
>>    PGP 4208 4D6E 595F 22B9 FF1C  ECB6 4A3C 2C54 FE23 53A7
> 
> 
> Having reloaded windows in the past I would mirror what you seem to think 
> above. It's the only scenario that seems to make sense re having to reinstall 
> grub periodically (on a semi regular basis) as the originator of the post 
> mentions. As they do not mention the particulars leading up to the need to 
> re-load grub, one can reasonably assume a windows reinstall has be performed 
> just prior to each
> 
> James
> 

I think a smart policy is to never install Grub to the MBR on dual-boot 
systems. Microsoft wants the MBR, so let them have it. Grub should be 
installed into the Linux partition's bootsector, and the NT-Loader 
should be configured to provide an option to boot Linux.

Linda, if you install the package doc-linux-text, read 
/usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/Linux+NT-Loader.gz to find out more about 
doing this. Since that document was written for LILO rather than Grub, 
some small changes would be necessary.