Officially HATING myself since 2005

[TruB]

yeap.. full format for me too.. havent defragged in years..
my brother in law cant get that into his head.. hes pretty useless when it comes to operate a computer correctly..

he keeps visit wares sites.. even though i have got him dc++ now when he got broad band and all..

he was going to get 8mbit.. which i could get too.. but i dont need it.. and so i doubt he will too.. so he finaly settled of my sister talked sense into him.

i tried to help him reinstall once.. never again.. all the virus had skrewed with bios so when i started it could find anything.. i manage to install windows from an really old computer into the hard drive.. however fixin bios did a more pro who lives nearby..

anyways.. if the computer sucks down.. like it often do.. he defrages.. but it dont getting anybetter..

so when i found that maybe i should help.. i introduced.. adaware.. we.. first search.. 100 hits.. second search updated adaware version.. a 100 more..'

never been over 30.. atleast i dont think i have.

if something is screwing.. format c.. and its as good as new 5 hours later.. when i have installed most of the stuff and updated all of that.. including windows..

btw.. sp2.. is it fixed yet?.. or does it still suck as before?

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

I'm using SP2 since its release, never had any sort of problem with it

[von Ryan]

Well, what are the other options (besides MBR) to install GRUB?

And I did tried fixmbr, but, then again, my disk is unaccessible, so, it doesn't work...

/me leaves desperate message on the guy's awnsering machine

[FrostyCoolSlug]

something i did, when the partition tables blew up on my HD, i downloaded knoppix (http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html) it's a boot CD, with a variety of tools for repairing potentially damaged disks.. Saved my ass a few times over

[Whistler]

"Well, what are the other options (besides MBR) to install GRUB?"

/dev/hda = MBR (Master Boot Record), the boot record of the entire HD
/dev/hda1 = Boot Record of the partition (if you have GNU/Linux installed in 2nd partition, change it to /dev/hda2. 3rd is /dev/hda3. etc.)

[FrostyCoolSlug]

doesn't that need some form of boot loader in the MBR to boot /dev/hda1?

no MBR = no booting, most bios' wont scan through partitions for a boot loader ;/

[von Ryan]

@Frosty> Thanks for the tip, will try it next time

@Whistler> Ok, when my HD comes back, I'll do it

[Pierre-Marie Baty]

Frosty is right, the partitions' bootloaders can only be executed if the master boot record "chainloads" them (which is what Grub does). A hard disk is sliced in the following way:

512 bytes => MBR (+partition table)
512 bytes => partition 1 boot record
all the rest => actual partition 1
512 bytes => partition 2 boot record
all the rest => actual partition 2
etc.

Where Whistler is wrong though, is that everytime Windows will feel like crushing the MBR again (which it does quite often), any custom bootloader you have will zap. You will still need a UNIX recovery disk to fix it manually, and it's not necessarily trivial.

[Rick]

I use the windows boot loader to load grub on my pc...did it like mentioned here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-10588.html (scroll down to point 4).

On my laptop, grub and windows play nice together though.

[von Ryan]

:'(

My HD has died!!!

Fortunelly, it still was in the warranty period...
I shall make his official burial here, at BU... 9_9