Installing grub to dual boot

[Brad De Vries]

On 6/10/05, Mike Reinehr <cmr at amsent.com> wrote:
> On Friday 10 June 2005 08:15 am, Brad De Vries wrote:
> > Everyone/Anyone, I could use some assistance here.  I'll start with a
> > little history to make the current state and desired direction a bit
> > clearer:
> >
> > 1) Got a laptop with win2000 pro from work with a 20GB HD formatted FAT32.
> > 2) Ran the disk defragment and error checking tools so everything was
> > "clean." 3) Booted Knoppix and successfully ran "parted" to reduce the
> > FAT32 partition from 20GB to 10GB.
> > 4) System failed to boot win2000 due to error "NTLDR is missing."
> > Figured I'd fix that later.
> > 5) Installed Fedora Core 3 into the newly freed up 10GB.
> > 6) System booted fine into FC3 and the crowd went wild.
> > 7) Verified the grub.conf had an option to the win2000 side and rebooted.
> > 8) Chose the win2000 option from the grub menu but it failed to boot
> > due to "NTLDR is missing" error.
> > 9) After much googling, hunting, and trying I was able to fix the
> > win2000 boot problem but in doing so overwrote grub from the MBR.
> > 10) Figured that since the original problem (see step 4) came from
> > changing the disk partition size, all I'd have to do is boot the linux
> > side and run grub-install.
> > 11) I've booted from the FC3 disk in rescue mode and Knoppix and
> > neither will successfully run "grub-install /dev/hda2".  The command
> > hangs.
> >
> > So the current state is that I can boot win2000 fine (hda1,) I have
> > FC3 installed (hda2) but I can't re-install grub so that I can boot
> > either O/S.
> >
> > What I'd like is to have grub appear at boot time and allow me to
> > choose either FC3 or win2000.  How do I re-install grub to allow that
> > to happen?
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Brad.
> 
> Brad,
> 
> >From the GRUB Manual:
> 
> 3.3 Installing GRUB using grub-install
> 
>         _Caution:_ This procedure is definitely deprecated, because there are several
> possibilities that your computer can be unbootable.
> 
> Grab a copy of the GRUB Manual & read parts 3, 3.1 & 3.2 which will describe
> how to create a GRUB boot floppy & then install GRUB to the MBR.
> 
> Cheers!
> 
> cmr

Mike, I appreciate the "read more" comments and will continue to do so
but I am unable to follow-through with your second suggestion.  I
can't create a bootable floppy because the laptop has either a CD or
the floppy drive installed at any given time and I need the CD to
boot.  I've never tried removing the CD drive while the system is
running and installing the floppy drive but I can't image that would
be good.

Once I get back home where I have other Linux machines, I'll be able
to create a bootable floppy.  I am curious however, what would it do
differently that booting from CD doesn't allow?

Brad