>.< Grub Wont Load My Xp Home

last time i had this problem i found my xp pro side of my hard drive was hidden and not active, resulting in suse being the only o.s that would boot. i had to boot from my partition magic cd to set the xp pro side active then reboot the pc to find everything was fine
dont know if this is of any use to anyone
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That would rock. Gonna try it now.

TTBOMK, when you install Grub it adds a pointer (to itself) in the MBR already present on the disk or partition, but it does not 'replace' it. Grub lives in stage one (and 1.5) of the mbr, but does not touch the stage 2 (partition table). Fixmbr however does repair the master boot record on the disk you run it on. I have seen cases where fixmbr (and a subsequent reinstall of Grub) will allow Grub to work properly. It's always worth a shot, not guaranteed to work. As a side note, if someone has a better knowledge of the mbr and Grub relationship I am interested in learning more. Please speak up.
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There are buttons in Yast called "Replace MBR with Generic Code" and "Restore MBR of Hard Disc". I have never used them. Don't they do the same as fixmbr?

There are buttons in Yast called "Replace MBR with Generic Code" and "Restore MBR of Hard Disc". I have never used them. Don't they do the same as fixmbr?
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Those options are not well documented anywhere and I have never tried them. Are you volunteering? (in the interest of SUSE Linux knowledge of course ) Personally I like my partitions just the way they are.

Those options are not well documented anywhere and I have never tried them. Are you volunteering? (in the interest of SUSE Linux knowledge of course ) Personally I like my partitions just the way they are.
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I will re-install my SUSE next week. I also have Windows installed, which I rarely use.

How can I check whether those buttons have had an effect once the computer, HD, MBR, OSes are in good shape?

Maybe we can ask pirokosan to try them, if he hasn't started the fixmbr yet.

How can I check whether those buttons have had an effect once the computer, HD, MBR, OSes are in good shape?
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Well, assuming that your current setup uses Grub, and that it is a conventional setup with XP on the first disk and/or partition, then if your theory is correct and the buttons act like fixmbr, what would happen is that you'd boot right into XP just like Grub never existed. You could obviously reinstall grub through the methods described in this thread.

Well, assuming that your current setup uses Grub, and that it is a conventional setup with XP on the first disk and/or partition, then if your theory is correct and the buttons act like fixmbr, what would happen is that you'd boot right into XP just like Grub never existed. You could obviously reinstall grub through the methods described in this thread.
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Yes, I have the setup you suppose. Very easy to test. I'll do the test today, before my next installation of SUSE. Thanks.

There are buttons in Yast called "Replace MBR with Generic Code" and "Restore MBR of Hard Disc". I have never used them. Don't they do the same as fixmbr?
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I have a dual boot PC, fully configured. From Yast, I have tried both buttons, one at a time.

No effect. Bootability is as it was before. When doing "Restore MBR of Hard Disc", Yast warned me that it is going to overwrite MBR with an older, saved version (I didn't know that MBR is backed up). That version apparently concided with my current one.

To test the utility of those two options, one evidently needs a damaged MBR, I think.

Thanks for running the test.

Sorry to have disappeared for a while there, i have been busy trying to get a job. It sucks not to have a bachelor's! So far I reinstalled suse and it still does the same thing. I would try the buttons but i had a scare today and almost lost suse too after it crashed. Grub would report an error and wouldn't load. I put in my suse live dvd in to try and reinstall it, but then firefox wouldn't connect (i was going to look for how to install grub on google). I restarted the machine and then grub loaded suse (quite a scare, i was lucky i guess). Then after that it checked the disk and opened suse.

Meh, i don't have a windows cd that can fix the mbr except for the vista dvd. I tried that but i cant run fixmbr from the recovery console (i dont think the fixmbr.exe is in there). I tried the gui but all it does is diskchk. The windowsXP install cd i have is the one that comes with emachies. (It's only a restore cd, meaning it just wipes disk and reinstalls only). Isn't there a boot disk with fixmbr i can download off the net?
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From the emachine install cd try

fdisk /mbr