GRUB GRUB GRUB GRUB... endless loop

[xenotrax]

My first posting on this Forum is a Question about "grub"

I did an upgrade from Fedora9 to Fedora10.
Fedora10 was running OK.

I was no more able to access my WindowsXP partition. :-(
so I used -> gedit /boot/grub/grub.conf

and added following text ...

title WindowsXP
unhide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


Now WindowsXP did boot and I was happy :-)

To early .. because after a reboot I got a black grub> screen

I tried to solve this problem with the Fedora10 installation DVD.

But then I got.. an endless GRUB loop on my "Welcome Screen" :-(

[Hlingler]

Did you look at stoat's GRUB How-To in "Guides and How-Tos" section?

V

[xenotrax]

Thank you for this hint !
I move to "Guides and How-Tos"

[stoat]

Originally Posted by xenotrax

I tried to solve this problem with the Fedora10 installation DVD.

But then I got.. an endless GRUB loop on my "Welcome Screen"

Hello xenotrax,

I, of course, have no way of knowing what is going on there. But I strongly suspect that it has to do with an attempt at re-installing GRUB that was botched by your use of the hide and unhide commands in the grub.conf.

Originally Posted by xenotrax

title WindowsXP
unhide (hd0,0)
hide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Now WindowsXP did boot and I was happy

Windows may have booted with that, but it resulted in the partition (hd0,1) becoming hidden. And it will stay that way until something else unhides it (usually complimentary commands in another section of the grub.conf). That is at least one explanation for why Fedora stopped booting immediately after Windows started booting. It can also explain the botched GRUB stages after attempting to repair the situation with the Fedora DVD.

You know, it's rare to need the hide and unhide commands in the grub.conf. They are most useful when there is a need to prevent an old Windows OS from "seeing" another old Windows OS's partition. They are also sometimes used to workaround partition limits in complex multi-booting partition layouts with many partitions. So I'm wondering why (or if) you need to use those commands. If you really don't need them, then I recommend that you use your Fedora DVD to do the following...

1. Use the GRUB shell and it's unhide command to unhide any partition that became hidden.
2. Edit the grub.conf to remove the hide, unhide, and makeactive commands.
3. Re-install the GRUB boot loader to where ever it was originally (the MBR, I guess).

[xenotrax]

Hello Stoat,

I think you are right. This would also explain why I was unable to access "Stage1" .

But it's to late to try .. the New Installation of Fedora10 is running. And I can only tell you as I never again play around with GRUB ... whitout knowing exactly the effects.

Thank you Stoat .. for your GRUB-HowTo Guide