Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 2622 Location: Earth

I've lost the 1st (main) HDD on a 2 HDD system.
Tthe system has always been a MS configured system with an XP built MBR. All HDDs and I/O devices are IDE class.

Drive 1 - The main drive's MBR pointed to Partition 1 (a hidden parttiton) containing a samll Windows bootable backup partiton with the PC's boot.ini file for all bootable OS. Now that this drive1 is dead, theere is no valid MBR + boot.ini to get the system booted.

Drive 2 is a larger drive with freespace (enough to accommodate all of drive 1's partitions). And drive 2 has all of the running OSes in their own partitions here.

The way the system used to work before drive 1 crashed, today, is the system would boot, the boot.ini on drive 1-partition 1 would be invoked and the MS Boot Manager would display. If no selection was made, the system would proceed to boot a Windows which physically is on drive 2.

Here's my question as I think GRUB4DOS may be a blessing in this situation. Assuming I remove Drive 1 from the system.

Can I use GRUB4DOS, either via your CD or via a boot diskette to start the OS on the remaining system drive (drive2)?
Can I instruct GRUB4DOS to search the remaining drives for OSs? I know I can use a running QuickSEt to see the partitions by mounting drive2.
If I get QuickSet or GRUB4DOS diskette to get to the GRUB4DOS menu, can I hit esc, type "e" or "c" and enter a couple of commands to manually kick the system to boot? This assumes I know the partition number(s) I want to boot
.
Do you have an example somewhere?

All OSs on the HDDs in this system are XP class OSes.

Thanks in advance for your insights

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 2622 Location: Earth

Double post: User (me) error.

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 2622 Location: Earth

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

UPDATE: Grub4DosConfig v1.7
# 10feb11 v1.7: sort the probepart result, install on internal or removable drives, fix typo at checking boot_part

Must be more stable Wink

bigpup · Posted: Tue 15 Feb 2011, 03:06 Post subject:

I am not seeing V1.7 on the download site.
http://182.164.208.91/puppy/pup4/opt/pets/

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

[quote="bigpup"]I am not seeing V1.7 on the download site.
Ops, sorry. Now it is there:
http://shino.pos.to/linux/puppy/

bigpup · Posted: Tue 15 Feb 2011, 14:56 Post subject:

Not sure if you know about this:
Grub24dos
http://grub24dos.sourceforge.net/

nooby · Joined: 29 Jun 2008 Posts: 9382 Location: SwedenEurope

BigPup that was a good find. Hope someone do a pet or sfs of that one.

They tell so little but the good thing would be that one get the features of grub2 in a well known grub4dos format of how to set it all up?

Thanks indeed for telling us. I longed for something this for a long time but I know too little to handle scripts.

here is a link to screenshots of how it works?
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=379924

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

bigpup · Posted: Wed 16 Mar 2011, 00:05 Post subject:

Hope you are safe!!!!!

Could this be done with Grub4dos?
How to give your Grub menu a password
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=58860

shinobar · Joined: 28 May 2009 Posts: 2249 Location: Japan

Thanks bigpup, me and my family are all safe and fine.

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 2622 Location: Earth

Are there any similar instructions for GRUB4DOS to boot an ISO?

Thanks in advance

gcmartin · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 2622 Location: Earth