Re: Windows corrupts Grub on Dell
On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 04:20:17PM -0500, Kent West wrote:
> I have a Dell Optiplex 170L desktop machine, set to dual-boot Sid and
> WinXP, using grub.
>
> As long as I boot into Debian, no problem, but if I boot into Windows,
> the next time I reboot, grub just goes into an infinite loop of
> rebooting. I briefly see a mention of grub stage 1.5, then reboot.
>
> I can fix the problem by booting of a Kanotix LiveCD; that's not the
> problem.
>
> The problem is that once I boot back into Windows, the corruption returns.
>
> I found the same problem on an Ubuntu forum
> (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-23519.html); his solution
> was to give up on grub and use Windows XP's boot loader.
>
> I've thought about switching to lilo, but thought I'd ask you folks first.
>
> I suspect it may have to do with the extra partition at the front of the
> drive that Dell uses for its diagnostic utilities, but that's just a
> guess out of ignorance.
>
> Any ideas?
Any luck yet? A stab in the dark ;-) If there is a partition at the
front of the drive for diagnostics then there normally a fdisk entry and
*also* a grub entry. For example on my compaq laptop:
root@kan:~# fdisk -l
[..]
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda2 1 2 4000+ 12 Compaq ...
[..]
and
root@kan:~# less /boot/grub/menu.lst
[..]
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
title Compaq Diagnostics
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
If you have something like that then I'd see if it occured after booting
into diagnostics instead of Windows. Well, I'd probably try all
combinations just for curiosity and then consider filing a bug against
grub. But if it didn't happen after booting into diagnostics then I
would suspect Windows and maybe look at what sort of boot manager stuff
is happening there.
Oh, If you haven't got that stuff in menu.lst try adding it then try
above paragraph.
Best of Luck
--
Chris.
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