(GRUB) BootLoader Problem


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I'm Relatively new to the *nix OS environment and I've run into a problem that I haven't been able to fix. :blush:

I have Windows XP and SuSE 8 installed on my computer. I chose to temporarily use a floppy based bootloader (GRUB) to load SuSE so I could evaluate it without changing my current bootloader. This setup worked fine for me, when I wanted to load SuSE I would just place the floppy into the drive and boot the computer.

Here's the problem:

Without thinking about how it would affect the arrangement of partitions on my disk, I used PartitionMagic to delete a couple of unused partitions and during the process it rearranged my disks partitions and moved some free space to the end of the disk. Windows XP boots fine, but I can no longer boot to SuSE with the boot disk. The SuSE partition was not deleted or changed in any way, just moved. So my SuSE bootdisk no longer points to the right partition. :( Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a way to fix this. I'm hoping that there is an easy way to fix this for someone with limited knowledge of GRUB and Linux. Any suggestions on how I could fix this???

P.S. I'm open to replacing the bootloader on the MBR if it will make easier to fix as long as I can boot both XP and SuSE and I don't really care if I use GRUB or another bootloader as long as it works.

Edited by intensityx
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You may have luck editing the grub.conf file. The bootloader on the mbr would point to a physical sector where grub is located. Usually /boot

Grub would then load the kernel or load the windows bootloader. If that always goes wrong you can use the windows "fdisk /mbr" to rewrite the mbr to point to the windows bootloader.

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You may have luck editing the grub.conf file. The bootloader on the mbr would point to a physical sector where grub is located. Usually /boot

Grub would then load the kernel or load the windows bootloader.

Thanks for your response Goalie_CA. How would I edit this file? I can only boot to XP and I don't have access to another *.nix machine right now. Obviously I can't read the bootdisk from XP.

I tried running the SuSE install again in hope that it would give me the option of creating a new bootdisk or setting up a new boot-loader to the MBR, but it looks like it wants wipe my old installation and replace it with a new one. :cry:

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in grub.conf set "root=LABEL=/" that makes it more dynamic :D

You could attempt to read the file in windows, if that fails, there are numerous "floppy disk distros" with text editors.

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