Yup. I blew it away. I had win98 and suse 8.2 on the same hard drive, booting linux from floppy. Noticed that I could no longer boot windows from the hard drive, so I attemted to restore the mbr that I'd saved earlier. That didn't work, my partition table is gone, and I can't get there from here. Parted has a function called something like 'Guess at partition near START and END'. I assume it's looking for cylindar numbers. Is there a way to get those if I didn't write them down when I partitioned the drive? I do have the sizes of the partitions, to the nearest 0.1 GB. Looking for a free solution here. I did find a $90 solution that runs in windows and teases me by showing the files but not letting me copy or view them. Thanks, Greg
are you looking for a way to recover the files or to rebuild the mbr? What filesystem was it? ext3? fat? Several ways to recover files if fat/ntfs through software...one program i have heard of to recover ext2 filesystem...ill try and find the name. --- Gregory Avedissian <gma2004@verizon.net> wrote:
Yup. I blew it away. I had win98 and suse 8.2 on the same hard drive, booting linux from floppy. Noticed that I could no longer boot windows from the hard drive, so I attemted to restore the mbr that I'd saved earlier. That didn't work, my partition table is gone, and I can't get there from here.
Parted has a function called something like 'Guess at partition near START and END'. I assume it's looking for cylindar numbers. Is there a way to get those if I didn't write them down when I partitioned the drive? I do have the sizes of the partitions, to the nearest 0.1 GB.
Looking for a free solution here. I did find a $90 solution that runs in windows and teases me by showing the files but not letting me copy or view them.
Thanks, Greg _______________________________________________ Wlug mailing list Wlug@mail.wlug.org http://mail.wlug.org/mailman/listinfo/wlug
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Hi Greg Gregory Avedissian wrote:
Yup. I blew it away. I had win98 and suse 8.2 on the same hard drive, booting linux from floppy. Noticed that I could no longer boot windows from the hard drive, so I attemted to restore the mbr that I'd saved earlier.
You don't say how you tried to "restore" but it sounds like you might have tried to do it within SuSE by copying the mbr copy SuSE makes into the mbr space. If so, you still have another option. You can use windows fdisk as fdisk /mbr You may then have to do something to get command.com and msdos.sys files back into place; I think the command is sys c: but am not sure (long time since I have played with Windows) (i.e. sometimes just the fdisk /mbr is not enough). I believe all this requires a dos/windows boot disk which should have the requisite tools on it. Read the manual to confirm that sys command :-) Also, can you boot into Linux (you made a boot disk didn't you) and simply run LILO. Try the simple things before screwing around with parted. Finally, it is generally a good idea to be more specific about what you did to get into trouble and what you have tried. It makes Dx and Rx easier for the reader. doug PS now you know why it is a good idea to have a hard copy of /etc/fstab and of the output of fdisk -l for each hard drive in your system! :-) PPS My spelling checker thinks fdisk should be frisk and sys should be sighs. :-)
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as, dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1 I restored with: dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one. I also tried restoring with debug.exe, according to a long set of instructions that I could provide but not explain. Unfortunately, the only copies of the linux versions were on the hard drive, so I couldn't repeat that unless (until) I can suck the files off the lost drive. There's a good possibility of retrieving those files, along with the data files I want, thanks to a friend. And I probably won't even keep the drive as a win/linux combo, but start over again with two drives. But I'd still like to know where I went wrong and if there's a way to reverse it. Thanks, Greg doug waud wrote:
Hi Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
Yup. I blew it away. I had win98 and suse 8.2 on the same hard drive, booting linux from floppy. Noticed that I could no longer boot windows from the hard drive, so I attemted to restore the mbr that I'd saved earlier.
You don't say how you tried to "restore" but it sounds like you might have tried to do it within SuSE by copying the mbr copy SuSE makes into the mbr space. If so, you still have another option. You can use windows fdisk as fdisk /mbr You may then have to do something to get command.com and msdos.sys files back into place; I think the command is
sys c:
but am not sure (long time since I have played with Windows) (i.e. sometimes just the fdisk /mbr is not enough). I believe all this requires a dos/windows boot disk which should have the requisite tools on it. Read the manual to confirm that sys command :-)
Also, can you boot into Linux (you made a boot disk didn't you) and simply run LILO.
Try the simple things before screwing around with parted.
Finally, it is generally a good idea to be more specific about what you did to get into trouble and what you have tried. It makes Dx and Rx easier for the reader.
doug
PS now you know why it is a good idea to have a hard copy of /etc/fstab and of the output of fdisk -l for each hard drive in your system! :-)
PPS My spelling checker thinks fdisk should be frisk and sys should be sighs. :-)
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Hi again Greg Gregory Avedissian wrote:
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as,
dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1
I restored with:
dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one.
I admit I would have used the second, safer (since it does not touch the partition table), but I don't see why the 512 bs variant would not have worked unless you had changed the partition table since making that boot.MBR file.
also tried restoring with debug.exe, according to a long set of instructions that I could provide but not explain. Unfortunately, the only copies of the linux versions were on the hard drive, so I couldn't repeat that unless (until) I can suck the files off the lost drive.
Why don't you boot from a bootable floppy? Alternatively, start the SuSE recovery mechanism which includes "boot an installed system" as an option. If all that is screwed up it the MBR, you could then simply run LILO to refresh it.
There's a good possibility of retrieving those files, along with the data files I want, thanks to a friend.
Or see above.
And I probably won't even keep the drive as a win/linux combo, but start over again with two drives.
While I agree that's a good idea in general, it will still not prevent you blowing away something if you put your mind to it! :-)
But I'd still like to know where I went wrong and if there's a way to reverse it.
It is hard to tell what went wrong until you tell us what you were doing just before the system no longer would boot. (Those two lines creating the boot.xyz files would only read from the first 512 or 446 bytes not do any writing there so they cannot be the cause of your troubles.) Note that generally, when you are asking for help, providing your diagnosis (i.e. "I blew away the MBR") is not very helpful. Rather your should provide an objective description of what is not happening correctly, like "I can no longer boot linux" etc. The point is that, since you are in over your head (or you would not be posting a query), your diagnosis is not going to be very reliable so anyone trying to help you will need to know what your were actually doing just before the problem arose not what you think you did. They can then make their diagnosis and/or prognosis/treatment. doug
doug waud wrote:
Hi again Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as,
dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1
I restored with:
dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one.
I admit I would have used the second, safer (since it does not touch the partition table), but I don't see why the 512 bs variant would not have worked unless you had changed the partition table since making that boot.MBR file.
No, I didn't change the partition table. I made these backups within days of installing, so that I would have copies of a new, working mbr.
It is hard to tell what went wrong until you tell us what you were doing just before the system no longer would boot. (Those two lines creating the boot.xyz files would only read from the first 512 or 446 bytes not do any writing there so they cannot be the cause of your troubles.)
Why don't you boot from a bootable floppy? Alternatively, start the SuSE recovery mechanism which includes "boot an installed system" as an option. If all that is screwed up it the MBR, you could then simply run LILO to refresh it.
I had a new win98 installation working ok, then I installed suse8.2 and set it up so that it would boot with GRUB from floppy. I don't recall if I ever tried to boot from the harddrive to get into windows after I installed suse, but I know I could get there from the floppy. When I did try to boot off the hard drive two days ago, it hung with the message, "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk." I could still boot to win or linux from the grub floppy at this point. I tried restoring the mbr in dos with debug.exe, and that didn't help. I could still boot to linux with the floppy, and I can't remember if I could still boot to windows. Then I tried restoring with dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 After that, I couldn't boot from the grub floppy anymore. Trying to boot the installed system from the rescue disk also failed. I then booted to the rescue system. Output of sfdisk -l looked like this: Disk /dev/hda: 3737 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track /dev/hda: unrecognized partition No partitions found Repeating the restore procedure with debug.exe didn't help, either. Thanks, Greg
Hi again This time, let's try focussing on one thing to try. I don't see that you have ever tried the standard way to restore the MBR for Windows --- boot a Windows floppy with fdisk on it and type fdisk /mbr and, if you still cannot boot windows, add a sys c: It is not clear from here why you did not try this. doug Gregory Avedissian wrote:
doug waud wrote:
Hi again Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as,
dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1
I restored with:
dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one.
I admit I would have used the second, safer (since it does not touch the partition table), but I don't see why the 512 bs variant would not have worked unless you had changed the partition table since making that boot.MBR file.
No, I didn't change the partition table. I made these backups within days of installing, so that I would have copies of a new, working mbr.
It is hard to tell what went wrong until you tell us what you were doing just before the system no longer would boot. (Those two lines creating the boot.xyz files would only read from the first 512 or 446 bytes not do any writing there so they cannot be the cause of your troubles.)
Why don't you boot from a bootable floppy? Alternatively, start the SuSE recovery mechanism which includes "boot an installed system" as an option. If all that is screwed up it the MBR, you could then simply run LILO to refresh it.
I had a new win98 installation working ok, then I installed suse8.2 and set it up so that it would boot with GRUB from floppy. I don't recall if I ever tried to boot from the harddrive to get into windows after I installed suse, but I know I could get there from the floppy.
When I did try to boot off the hard drive two days ago, it hung with the message, "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk."
I could still boot to win or linux from the grub floppy at this point. I tried restoring the mbr in dos with debug.exe, and that didn't help. I could still boot to linux with the floppy, and I can't remember if I could still boot to windows. Then I tried restoring with dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
After that, I couldn't boot from the grub floppy anymore. Trying to boot the installed system from the rescue disk also failed. I then booted to the rescue system. Output of sfdisk -l looked like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 3737 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track /dev/hda: unrecognized partition No partitions found
Repeating the restore procedure with debug.exe didn't help, either.
Thanks, Greg
I know that the original question was based on a suse8.2 installation but I'm guessing this is the Linux 2.6 kernel bug that has been discussed at length in other places. Have you tried sfdisk? Details and a solution here : http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2004-May/msg00908.html Cheers. Jason. --- doug waud <douglas.waud@umassmed.edu> wrote:
Hi again
This time, let's try focussing on one thing to try.
I don't see that you have ever tried the standard way to restore the MBR for Windows --- boot a Windows floppy with fdisk on it and type fdisk /mbr and, if you still cannot boot windows, add a sys c:
It is not clear from here why you did not try this.
doug
doug waud wrote:
Hi again Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as,
dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1
I restored with:
dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one.
I admit I would have used the second, safer (since it does not touch the partition table), but I don't see why the 512 bs variant would not have worked unless you had changed the partition table since making
boot.MBR file.
No, I didn't change the partition table. I made these backups within days of installing, so that I would have copies of a new, working mbr.
It is hard to tell what went wrong until you tell us what you
were
doing just before the system no longer would boot. (Those two
creating the boot.xyz files would only read from the first 512 or 446 bytes not do any writing there so they cannot be the cause of your troubles.)
Why don't you boot from a bootable floppy? Alternatively, start
SuSE recovery mechanism which includes "boot an installed system" as an option. If all that is screwed up it the MBR, you could then simply run LILO to refresh it.
I had a new win98 installation working ok, then I installed suse8.2 and set it up so that it would boot with GRUB from floppy. I don't recall if I ever tried to boot from the harddrive to get into windows after I installed suse, but I know I could get there from the floppy.
When I did try to boot off the hard drive two days ago, it hung with the message, "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk."
I could still boot to win or linux from the grub floppy at this
Gregory Avedissian wrote: that lines the point. I
tried restoring the mbr in dos with debug.exe, and that didn't help. I could still boot to linux with the floppy, and I can't remember if I could still boot to windows. Then I tried restoring with dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
After that, I couldn't boot from the grub floppy anymore. Trying to boot the installed system from the rescue disk also failed. I then booted to the rescue system. Output of sfdisk -l looked like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 3737 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track /dev/hda: unrecognized partition No partitions found
Repeating the restore procedure with debug.exe didn't help, either.
Thanks, Greg
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Hi all (again!) J Schonberg wrote:
I know that the original question was based on a suse8.2 installation but I'm guessing this is the Linux 2.6 kernel bug that has been discussed at length in other places. Have you tried sfdisk?
I don't follow your logic. Since Greg is using SuSE 8.2, he is a long way from a 2.6 kernel. So I don't see how you can diagnose his problem as a 2.6 not-ready-for-prime-time bug. doug
Hi Doug, I haven't tried fdisk /mbr because I don't really fully understand what it does and have never seen a good explanation of how it will affect linux partitions. This morning, I read that it shouldn't be used on disks that have more than four partitions. I have five partitions and some unclaimed space. I might try it later today. Beside that, anything of value is on the linux side of the disk. (That's not a microsoft slur, it's just where I have my files.) So, while I would like to be able to get the whole thing back to its original working order as a learning exercise, I'm more motivated to get to the linux partitions. Thanks again, Greg doug waud wrote:
Hi again
This time, let's try focussing on one thing to try.
I don't see that you have ever tried the standard way to restore the MBR for Windows --- boot a Windows floppy with fdisk on it and type fdisk /mbr and, if you still cannot boot windows, add a sys c:
It is not clear from here why you did not try this.
doug
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
doug waud wrote:
Hi again Greg
Gregory Avedissian wrote:
There were three backups of the mbr. One made under dos with debug.exe, and the others made with linux as,
dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.MBR bs=512 count=1 dd if=/dev/hda of=/boot/boot.446.MBR bs=446 count=1
I restored with:
dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 I think maybe I picked the wrong one.
I admit I would have used the second, safer (since it does not touch the partition table), but I don't see why the 512 bs variant would not have worked unless you had changed the partition table since making that boot.MBR file.
No, I didn't change the partition table. I made these backups within days of installing, so that I would have copies of a new, working mbr.
It is hard to tell what went wrong until you tell us what you were doing just before the system no longer would boot. (Those two lines creating the boot.xyz files would only read from the first 512 or 446 bytes not do any writing there so they cannot be the cause of your troubles.)
Why don't you boot from a bootable floppy? Alternatively, start the SuSE recovery mechanism which includes "boot an installed system" as an option. If all that is screwed up it the MBR, you could then simply run LILO to refresh it.
I had a new win98 installation working ok, then I installed suse8.2 and set it up so that it would boot with GRUB from floppy. I don't recall if I ever tried to boot from the harddrive to get into windows after I installed suse, but I know I could get there from the floppy.
When I did try to boot off the hard drive two days ago, it hung with the message, "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk."
I could still boot to win or linux from the grub floppy at this point. I tried restoring the mbr in dos with debug.exe, and that didn't help. I could still boot to linux with the floppy, and I can't remember if I could still boot to windows. Then I tried restoring with dd if=/boot/boot.MBR of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1
After that, I couldn't boot from the grub floppy anymore. Trying to boot the installed system from the rescue disk also failed. I then booted to the rescue system. Output of sfdisk -l looked like this:
Disk /dev/hda: 3737 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track /dev/hda: unrecognized partition No partitions found
Repeating the restore procedure with debug.exe didn't help, either.
Thanks, Greg
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participants (4)
-
doug waud -
Gregory Avedissian -
J Schonberg -
Mike Leo