Where is my OS residing? SOLVED!

Booting, installing, newbie
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Javelin Dan
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue 28 Dec 2010, 17:16
Location: Akron, Ohio

Where is my OS residing? SOLVED!

#1 Post by Javelin Dan »

Running Lucid Pup 5.2.8 on a Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop; 18 GB hard drive, 512 MB RAM, Pentium III processor.

This is just a curiosity I was hoping someone could explain. This box is strictly a learning toy and has nothing on it I care to save. I’ve changed the OS on it more times than I can count, and recently, I had Plop installed so I could boot from USB several various OS’s I wanted to try. When I removed Plop and tried to reboot, I got some sort of command line message telling me there was an error (sorry, I didn’t record the message. This has happened many times before often requiring me to reinstall the OS). However this time, I simply typed “reboot
Last edited by Javelin Dan on Tue 22 Jan 2013, 13:56, edited 1 time in total.

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rcrsn51
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#2 Post by rcrsn51 »

Here is what I think is happening: Your partition table has gotten corrupted so Gparted can't find any partitions. But the actual data on the hard drive is still there.

Your Plop bootloader ignores the partition table and finds Puppy in the usual place on your hard drive.

starhawk
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#3 Post by starhawk »

What rcrsn51 said.

Along with a warning.

If you decide to create a new partition table, do try and copy over everything important first -- a drive with a new partition table is a blank drive!

...also, the obvious: you must boot from removable media (CD, USB) in order to create the partition table. If you attempt to wipe the drive you're running from, you WILL get an enormous mess -- it will only partially work, and you will get both a very badly broken operating system (if there's anything left of that, or any data really at all), and a very badly broken partition table. At that point I'd recommend giving the drive a few hours with Darik's Boot And Nuke (DBAN, google will help you there) for a secure format before proceeding.

Remember the old practical joke about typing "format c:\" at an MS-DOS prompt? This would be worse. Much, much worse...

Javelin Dan
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue 28 Dec 2010, 17:16
Location: Akron, Ohio

#4 Post by Javelin Dan »

Yeah but here's the kicker - I totally uninstalled Plop and am booting out of the Grub menu.

JustGreg
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#5 Post by JustGreg »

Probably one of the boot loaders that you have used was installed itself to the hard disk. The installation of the boot loader wrote a new Master Boot Record (MBR) and destroyed the hard disk partition table. The MBR is the first 512 bytes (first sector) of the hard drive along with the partition table. A "good" boot loader makes a copy of the original MBR and stores it some place.

When you un-installed PLOP, it probably restored the original MBR allowing Grub to work.

I hope this helps
Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Javelin Dan
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue 28 Dec 2010, 17:16
Location: Akron, Ohio

#6 Post by Javelin Dan »

Sorry Starhawk, I didn't know you were there when I last posted. I have a copy of D-ban, used it many times. You recommend this before a fresh install I take it? Easy enough to do and good to know. While I'm at it, why does installing Plop usually take out my installation of Grub? I usually have to at least re-install Grub, but occasionally have to re-install the entire OS.

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rcrsn51
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#7 Post by rcrsn51 »

Javelin Dan wrote:Yeah but here's the kicker - I totally uninstalled Plop and am booting out of the Grub menu.
The same applies to GRUB.
Javelin Dan wrote:While I'm at it, why does installing Plop usually take out my installation of Grub? I usually have to at least re-install Grub, but occasionally have to re-install the entire OS.
They both place their own boot code in the MBR of the hard drive. So one erases the other.

starhawk
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#8 Post by starhawk »

Javelin Dan wrote:I have a copy of D-ban, used it many times. You recommend this before a fresh install I take it?
Only if and when you've tried that fresh install and it's botched -- and even then only if you know it's botched because the drive is full of junk.

Javelin Dan
Posts: 121
Joined: Tue 28 Dec 2010, 17:16
Location: Akron, Ohio

#9 Post by Javelin Dan »

OK, thanks to all for clearing this up. I think I'll just start out with a fresh install - been meaning to try Puppy Precise as a permanent install on this machine anyway. It's interesting, so far Lucid 5.28 rocks on this computer better than any other OS I've tried. Youtube playback is better than anything I've tried, including Wary. But I keep searching...

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