messed up grub/mbr

sham885 · 10-10-2008, 03:07 PM

Ok so I split my hard drive into 3 partitions. The first I put xp and named it "main", the 2nd I installed ubuntu which also added the small swap partition, the last I formatted fat32 planning to share it between xp and ubuntu. Everything ran fine for awhile except ubuntu never recognized that little fat32 partition so it went unused. Then I damaged xp and it would not load normally. After months of using just ubuntu and storing stuff on main I ordered a new xp cd with sp2 from dell. Not wanting to lose my saved files on main partition I did a quick format of the fat32 partition to NTFS and installed xp. Went to boot and got "System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:". Oops I forgot about the mbr. So I booted an ubuntu live cd and ran a command I found to reinstall grub. Restarted and the os menu from grub came up. There was only one xp option so I selected it, a screen flashed that I didn't have time to read, and back to "System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:". I restarted and selected ubuntu this time to be told it cannot load the partition.

Now I have no working os on the desktop so how do I fix them?

**K-B** · 10-10-2008, 04:36 PM

If you want to remove GRUB and allow XP to boot normally, you can do the following command from the XP CD's recovery console:

i.e. if your XP installation is on D:, run the command as such:

Code:

fixmbr D:

If that doesn't work, erase grub by running fixmbr on C:, or whatever designation Recovery Console gives the master drive.

sham885 · 10-10-2008, 04:42 PM

Except majority of my stuff is on ubuntu so getting xp working is only somewhat helpful. It means I can play viva pinata and access the stuff on main partition but not the stuff on the linux partition since windows cannot read that format. I need both working and if I had to choose I'd rather have ubuntu working again over xp.

**K-B** · 10-10-2008, 06:57 PM

Well, sounds like the installation got corrupted somehow, judging by the error message. Have you tried re-installing XP?

10-10-2008, 03:07 PM	#1 (permalink)
sham885 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 19 OS: ubuntu, xp sp2	messed up grub/mbr Ok so I split my hard drive into 3 partitions. The first I put xp and named it "main", the 2nd I installed ubuntu which also added the small swap partition, the last I formatted fat32 planning to share it between xp and ubuntu. Everything ran fine for awhile except ubuntu never recognized that little fat32 partition so it went unused. Then I damaged xp and it would not load normally. After months of using just ubuntu and storing stuff on main I ordered a new xp cd with sp2 from dell. Not wanting to lose my saved files on main partition I did a quick format of the fat32 partition to NTFS and installed xp. Went to boot and got "System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:". Oops I forgot about the mbr. So I booted an ubuntu live cd and ran a command I found to reinstall grub. Restarted and the os menu from grub came up. There was only one xp option so I selected it, a screen flashed that I didn't have time to read, and back to "System32\Hal.dll missing or corrupt:". I restarted and selected ubuntu this time to be told it cannot load the partition. Now I have no working os on the desktop so how do I fix them?

10-10-2008, 04:36 PM	#2 (permalink)
K-B Moderator, Linux Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: NY Posts: 2,875 OS: Vista, Ubuntu My System	Re: messed up grub/mbr If you want to remove GRUB and allow XP to boot normally, you can do the following command from the XP CD's recovery console: i.e. if your XP installation is on D:, run the command as such: Code: fixmbr D: If that doesn't work, erase grub by running fixmbr on C:, or whatever designation Recovery Console gives the master drive. __________________

10-10-2008, 04:42 PM	#3 (permalink)
sham885 Registered User Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 19 OS: ubuntu, xp sp2	Re: messed up grub/mbr Except majority of my stuff is on ubuntu so getting xp working is only somewhat helpful. It means I can play viva pinata and access the stuff on main partition but not the stuff on the linux partition since windows cannot read that format. I need both working and if I had to choose I'd rather have ubuntu working again over xp.

10-10-2008, 06:57 PM	#4 (permalink)
K-B Moderator, Linux Join Date: Oct 2005 Location: NY Posts: 2,875 OS: Vista, Ubuntu My System	Re: messed up grub/mbr Well, sounds like the installation got corrupted somehow, judging by the error message. Have you tried re-installing XP? __________________