cannot boot <SOLVED>

[AS]

No live USB stick and no other comp at the moment

nice, you have a lot of time to plan the future actions! 

a) verify again the BIOS settings, hard disk parameters, disk controller settings (Legacy/AHCI), boot priority of different devices: (removable, CDROM, had disk, USB, ...)

b) prepare a new liveCD (using a different computer), download and check the md5sum, burn the ISO at lowest possible speed and check again the md5sum, test the iso.

c) prepare a liveUSB stick, use PCLinuxOS-liveUSB-Creator, test it.

come back to your notebook and retry to boot, firstly from liveCD, if fail to boot, change the BIOS settings and try to boot from liveUSB.

Once you have successfully boot the system execute the fdisk -l command, do not try to any installation.
If you have destroyed the partition table in error, there is still the chance to recover the partitions, provided that you don't write further things on the disk.

AS

[redjama]

OK well finally got it to boot from the live cd. here what the fdisk comes up with.

Code: [Select]

[guest@localhost guest]$ fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa5fa48af

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1568    12594928+  83  Linux
/dev/sda2            1569       30401   231601072+   5  Extended
/dev/sda5            1569        2077     4088511   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6            2078       27692   205752456   83  Linux
/dev/sda7           27693       30401    21760011    7  HPFS/NTFS
[guest@localhost guest]$

[djohnston]

redjama.

Just two questions. What steps did you take to get it to boot from CD? What do you intend to use sda7 partition for? Windows won't boot from an extended partition.

[redjama]

redjama.

Just two questions. What steps did you take to get it to boot from CD? What do you intend to use sda7 partition for? Windows won't boot from an extended partition.

I took no steps, I waited patiently for it to finally boot. I now having it running off of the CD constantly till I can figure this out. I created a ntfs partition for windows, not sure what ur talking about as far as the extended partition is concerned.

[AS]

redjama.

Just two questions. What steps did you take to get it to boot from CD? What do you intend to use sda7 partition for? Windows won't boot from an extended partition.

I took no steps, I waited patiently for it to finally boot. I now having it running off of the CD constantly till I can figure this out. I created a ntfs partition for windows, not sure what ur talking about as far as the extended partition is concerned.

The partition table come from the past, originally allow for four partitions (primary partitions), later it was extended to allow more partitions. The extended partition born (which is really a partitions container) and inside the extended partitions you can have one ore more logical partition.

More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_partitioning

A know limitations of MS OSes is that they can boot only from a primary partition, (this is the main reason because when dual boot need to be setup, it's strongly suggested to install Windows first.)

/dev/sda1 is a Linux primary partition, probably the root filesystem "/",
/dev/sda2 is a extended partition, it use all remaining hard disk space
/dev/sda5 is your linux swap
/dev/sda6 is your linux home or data partition
/dev/sda7 is actually a NTFS partition but you will be unable to boot windows from there

All in all, considering your original needs, I would install Windows XP in VirtualBox, using the /dev/sda7 partitions.

However, right now try to restore the boot of Linux, start liveCD, then:
a) retry again RedoMBR
b) try to reinstall grub (PCC -> Boot -> Setup boot system),

ask for help as needed.

AS

[redjama]

I've tried to redo the mbr 3 times now with no success. Everytime I tried to redo it it says there's no bootloader found

[AS]

I've tried to redo the mbr 3 times now with no success. Everytime I tried to redo it it says there's no bootloader found

b) try to reinstall grub (PCC -> Boot -> Setup boot system),

[redjama]

Did that also......no luck

[AS]

Did that also......no luck

Could you expand a little ? what means no luck ?
did you have had errors while trying to reinstall grub ? if yes what error ?
did you see what grub stanza were going to be written ?

Also, try the following:
- boot from livecd
- PCC -> System -> Open a console as administrator
- mkdir /install
- mount /dev/sda1 /install
- ls -l /install/boot (post the result)

[redjama]

No luck as in after redid the grub I tried to reboot and got the same thing " error loading operating system" for a refresher course to make sure I'm doing this right, can I get a quick walk through on fixing the mbr? Just wana make sure I'm not missing anything

[Old-Polack]

No luck as in after redid the grub I tried to reboot and got the same thing " error loading operating system" for a refresher course to make sure I'm doing this right, can I get a quick walk through on fixing the mbr? Just wana make sure I'm not missing anything

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,62786.msg508062.html#msg508062

[redjama]

Finally got it back.  Thanks for all the help.  Very appreciated!!!!