Re: HELP- Grub problem, I can't load WInXP SOLVED

[Tom Pfeifer <tplists@optonline.net>]

Andy wrote:
> 
> On Tuesday 27 September 2005 12:42, Tom Pfeifer wrote:
> > Since your WinXP on /dev/hda1 is a FAT32 partition, one thing that might
> > work is to use the backup boot sector that is kept on FAT32 file systems
> > to restore the WinXP boot sector on /dev/hda1.
> >
> > dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/dev/hda1 bs=512 count=1 skip=6
> >
> > The above dd command will read the 7th sector (or sector 6) of the
> > partition, and then write it to the 1st sector (or sector 0). The 7th
> > sector is where the backup boot sector is stored on FAT32. The "skip"
> > means it will skip over the first 6 sectors when reading from the
> > partition - since you are interested in the 7th sector.
> >
> > GRUB should have only overwritten the 1st sector of the partition.
> >
> > Tom
> 
> Tom, I cannot thank you enough! Your instructions worked flawlessly. I can't
> believe that your dd command managed to fix something that Microsoft's own
> fixboot and fixmbr commands could not. You have saved me a lot of time and
> money, thank you very much.
> 
> Regards,
> Andy
> 

You're welcome, and glad to hear it. 

To be honest, I don't know if fixboot (or some other MS command) can
restore a backup boot sector. NTFS also has a backup boot sector (the
last sector of the partition), so you would think they would have a
command than can restore it but...

Tom