Re: Windows zapping by Stage1.5?

[adrian15]

Bob Bell wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I had Windows 2000 installed on my notebook computer.  I recently shrunk 
> my NTFS partition and installed Ubuntu, which left my drive partitioned 
> as follows:
>    /dev/hda1 * NTFS (Windows 2000)
>    /dev/hda2   Linux
>    /dev/hda3   Extended
>    /dev/hda5   Linux swap
>
> Ubuntu installed grub as a boot loader, which used chainloading to load 
> the Windows 2000 boot loader when selected.  Originally (i.e., the first 
> time or two), this worked fine.
>
> However, now when grub loads the message I see is "Grub loading 
> Stage1.5".  I do not see *any* further output.  I'm guessing that this 
> means that grub failed to load stage 1.5.  Since stage 1.5 is supposed 
> to be right after the MBR, I'm thinking that perhaps something in 
> Windows is not playing nicely and is overwriting it stage 1.5 ?

Hummm... Do you have any easy-restore utility or safety program that
might overwrite the stage 1.5 file code ?

> If I boot from a CD and run `grub-install /dev/hda`, all is well.  

I suppose that when you run this command grub embeds stage1_5 in
whatever place it embeds it.

The quick trick for avoiding this is forcing that stage1 loads stage2
directly instead of stage1 loading stage1_5, and then stage1_5 loading
stage2.

How do we do it? We only have to "remove" the stage1_5 files.

# mv /boot/grub/*stage1_5 /root # TO BE RUN AS ROOT

should work for that.

Once you've made that you've got to re-run the
# grub-install /dev/hda
command (it will complain: I cannot find stage1_5 but this is not fatal)
and of course, to tell us if everything goes fine without you having
problems once you reboot into windows 3 or 4 times.

adrian15

P.S.: You may be also interested on a tool of mine called: Super Grub
Disk which can be of much help if you have further problem with Grub in
a future. Take a look at: http://adrian15.raulete.net/grub/