Re: "Grub Hard Disk Error", after installing from sarge floppies

[Alvin Oga <aoga@ns.Linux-Consulting.com>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004, Joao Clemente wrote:

> ...but when one is suposed to get the GRUB menu, I get simply a
> "GRUB Hard Disk Error" message

grub is "unreasonably" finicky ....

you have several choices..
1)  boot into dos a:> fdisk /mbr
	-- wipe it out and try grub-install again

	-- another way to wipe out the bad MBR

	dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/hda bs=446 count=1 conv=sync
	( the bs and count values are important == no typo allowed )

2) i always use lilo, whenver grub failed .. 

3) install into the boot sector of the partition (/dev/hda1 ) instead 
   MBR of the disk ( /dev/hda )
	- but the mbr must be empty too

presumably you can boot off of other media to try to install the MBR
with grub/lilo/loadlin/...
	boot media == boot floppies, knoppix, deb cdrom,
	where you can get into standalone rescue mode

reinstalling probably wont help until the cause of the grub problem
is solved
	
c ya
alvin