rapple2

Thanks for that. In fact I don't have a linux boot partition (/boot). I didn't create one, nor did Red Hat suggest one or create one through the standard options. As I understand it it's not necessary, merely a convenience sometimes for ultra-cautious multi-booters. A small update, before I lose my Win2K completely. Having failed to figure it out, I took a step further and used Win2K recovery console to issue the fixMBR command. ( I don't really understand what precisely this and fixboot do, I assumed that fixMBR would be equivalent to fdisk /MBR) Thus expecting everything to be either a) Fully fixed or Royally screwed I rebooted. ...Can't find NTLDR fingers crossed, rebooted with setup CD in drive Windws 2K boot sequence started up. So... having installed RH9.1 and GRUB I (as you so eloquently put it) screwdrivered my boot sequence. BUT by applying the recovery console commands I am now left with what appears to be a purely Microsoft boot sequence issue. The code on the MBR is attempting to load NTLDR. It isn't finding it and complains, but if the CD is available it's appears to be intelligent enough to look on all attached drives, finds one and goes. However NTLDR is on the C drive. ??? The only useful piece of info I've gleaned from Microsoft is that this error message means that the boot process can't find NTLDR or it's corrupt. Q. Does GRUB modify or replace NTLDR in any way? Of course, I don't have the W2K repair disks and I can't create them if the copy of NTLDR on C is suspect. Guess I'll have to build a 2nd W2K system to create the repair disks... So, if you don't hear from me in the next couple of days, FDISK /MBR is different to recovery console fixmbr.

Had a happily working Win2K system. Installed Mandrake 9, but as usual it failed dismally to activate my ethernet card with DHCP and seemed to cause a long boot time, so I junked it. Win 2K still OK. Red Hat 9.1 arrived, thought I'd try it out. Installed it choosing Grub as the bootloader. Install went OK. Rebooted Can't find NTLDR. Hmmmm. Tried many things, Couldn't get it to work at all. So, in frustration, booted from Win 2K CD, into recovery console and used fixboot command. Rebooted, same problem, Can't find NTLDR. Booted again with Win 2K CD in drive intending to use fixmbr, got boot from CD prompt, ignored it and up came Grub!! Tried again, up came Grub again. To cut a long story short, If I don't have the CD in the drive, I always get Can't find NTLDR. If I do have the CD in the drive, I can choose to boot into Win2K setup by pressing a key to boot at the appropriate prompt, or I can leave it and Grub will come up. From Grub I have two options, Redhat or Win2K, both come up fine. I have even installed the recovery console now in the Win2K boot menu and that works fine. Going into Win2K shows that NTLDR, NTDETECT and boot.ini are all present in the root of the C\ drive. The HD is partitioned Primary NTFS Active (Win2K) Extended (2 NTFS parts) Primary EXT3 Redhat Primary Swap Can anyone explain to me what's going on here? Is Grub searching for NTLDR or vice versa, and why does it only work from the CD, not from the NTLDR on the hard drive? OR is something else entirely going on. Yes, I could probably fix this with an FDISK /MBR on the drive, but I'd like to understand what is going on here as it's likely to happen again if I reinstall Grub. ... and Red Hat did set up my Ethernet card correctly, did set up my internet connection first time and did connect to a W2K server based printer first time. Mandrake never did that for me. So I DO want to get this config running!! Thanks.