[Nottingham] SuSE 8.2 install problems

[Martin Clough]

Robert Davies wrote:
> On Tuesday 29 Apr 2003 22:11, Martin Clough wrote:
>> Derek Huskisson wrote:
>>> On Sun, 2003-04-27 at 04:51, Mike wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 2003-04-27 at 01:38, Scott Bennett wrote:
>>>>> Martin Clough wrote:
>>
>> [boot problem snipped]
>>
>> Thanks to everyone who replied.
>>
>>> Hello Martin
>>> If you want to restore the XP boot-up then you will need your XP
>>> install CD (if Bill Gates has let you have one.)
>>>   Boot up from this and select r (for recovery) when you get your
>>> first  menu.
>>
>> I think this is what I need to do.  However, bill (or sony) did not
>> let me have a boot disk, just some crappy recovery CDs.  Sony
>> support say that I have no option but
>> to recover the whole system from these CDs!
>>
>> I'm tempted, therefore, to try to install LILO or GRUB onto the hard
>> disk, with
>> windows as the default (for the other family members, you
>> understand!).
>
> Have a look in the /boot directory, most likely you have an MBR
> backup file, named for the disk device (try ls -l /dev/hd?), IIRC hda
> is .0300 or similar.
Thanks. I looked into this. The problem is that I didn't install lilo onto
the hard disk, rather YAST
splatted the MBR for its own purposes.  There were two boot files in the
/boot directory that
were created when 7.2 was installed, but they were for the 2nd partition
(0305) and the floppy.
Nothing for the primary partition on the hard disk.

SuSE have (finally) acknowledged the problem, but have no better solutions
than this group
to fix it.  I have therefore installed GRUB onto the primary partition, with
XP as the
default option.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Martin Clough