GRUB Loading stage2Geom Error

[Wizard]

> I guess I'm confused: GRUB isn't related to Windows or the hard disk's
> boot sector as far as booting goes: it boots from floppy, and that's
> when I get the problem.

I believe (read, "I could be wrong") GRUB still will look to the original
grub boot loader to find the Linux partition that was installed so it can
finish booting. Win2k replaces that bootloader with it's own, which in turn
blows LILO away. You may be able to create a boot floppy in Win2k for the
original Linux CDs and boot to the Linux Distribution CD, and then try to
perform the repair from there, but I'm not sure that will be any
simpler/faster than just reinstalling the OS.

> I can boot into Linux with a boot disk, and I'm confident I could use
> LILO to rewrite the boot sector, having done it after installing
> Win98, but I'd like to get GRUB going instead.

Win 98 didn't have the same problem as Win2k. I can't tell you why because I
don't know the details of it, but I can tell you that this is a KNOWN issue
with Win2k (and perhaps WinXP, I'm not sure).

> In other words, I'm not even able to start GRUB in order to rewrite
> the boot sector: whether M$ "hijacks" it somehow is yet to be
> discovered.
> Bill

I'm not telling you that there isn't some sort of workaround, I'm just
saying that it would probably be easier to just reinstall Linux. This is an
issue that I have heard of numerous times since Win2k, and If there was an
easy work around, I should think it wouldn't have been such a common
problem. As a note, if you have a commercial Linux like RedHat or Suse, it
should retain all or most of your existing setup and just rewrite the
binaries and boot loader, so it shouldn't be all that painful. I can't
however, speak to other distributions such as Debian, Slackware, or others.
Good luck,
Grant M.