grub rescue surprise for MSWindows users

Okay, so you got a laptop or PC from somewhere, cheap, or even free.

It has the entry-level MSWindows OS on it.

It has a moderately large hard disk, say 320 MB. But when you look at the hard disk's properties, it says that there is a nice chunk of it that seems not to be in use. 16 MB or even 100 MB.

And you think, "Huh? I want more space for my movies and songs!" And you format that space. And suddenly part of your laptop is no longer working. Maybe you can't even boot it at all.

You are not alone.

To understand the solution, you need to understand what happened.

There was probably another operating system in there, and it was hiding in the partition you thought would be great to use for your movies. Not just the other operating  system, but the program that lets you choose which one to boot.

So, no way to choose. No way to boot. Now what?

If you have a BIOS that is not locked down, you can boot a live CD from one of the Linux distributions. Knoppix is pretty good for this kind of thing.

You'll probably need a real-world friend to help you get the live CD and then to help you walk through the steps.

Oh, you'll need a CD or DVD drive, too.

Boot the live CD.

Launch a disk utility program. This is scary, because the one you want is also able to wipe your whole hard disk clean.

Select the hard disk.

Set the boot flag to the partition that contains the MSWindows boot programs. It will likely be the very first partition, unless the first partition was the one that was supposed to have Linux in it.

Quit the utility program.

You say, that's scary.

Okay, then here is the better solution:

Just install the OS from the live CD. Tell it to use the partition that you erased. The installer will most likely find your MSWindows partitions and set the new boot manager up for you.

And you'll be back in business with a reboot.

I mean, seriously, the only other alternative was to buy an official, high-priced MSWIndows package and try to install that. Just as dangerous and more expensive.

Just don't erase that Linux partition again. In fact, when you have time, boot the Linux OS and see if you can see anything that makes sense. A little bit at a time, and you can be amazed at what Microsoft won't let you do.

*GRUB* ISSUE in microsoft's help forums?

Got bit by grub2 again. This time it was being dumped to the grub "rescue shell" with a

symbol not found: grub_divmod64_full

message.

Looked it up on Google. One of the hits was on Microsoft's help forums, "GRUB ISSUES". I had to go take a look.

Irony abounds.

A user has MSWindows 7 and "Linux Boss" installed on his/her laptop. (At first, I thought, some new or custom boot manager, but maybe Boss Linux?)

And the user seems unaware that a Linux OS needs its own partition, among other things. And so, when MSWIndows disk utilities tell him he has 100MB unused, he takes the message at face value and reformats the partition for MSWindows.

Thus deleting most of grub. Thus deleting his boot manager. Thus the complaint from the part of grub that remained, telling him that grub can't find itself.

The first post is a partial answer, explanation that the Linux OS got wiped, and giving a pointer to the grub project's on-line documentation.

In the next post, the original poster clears things up. He got the laptop free from "the government". (Free? from the government? hmm .... Boss Linux seems to be an India-centric distribution.) Without install disks. Apparently without much instruction as to dual-booting and such.

(Kind of like with my Lenovo, partial steps that almost seem calculated to make users feel betrayed by Linux.)

Well, I started to get a hotmail account so I could go post over there some time back, but started reading the legalese and thought better of that idea. So I can't add my 50 cents to the discussion there. So I'll rant about it here. (Which delayed, by an hour, maybe, the fix.)

First. The bug is in Microsoft's tools. There should be stronger warning about the possibility of deleting something you actually needed when you decide to format a partition that does not contain a file system recognized by MSWindows.

Actually, if Microsoft wants to save its sinking ship and start learning how to cooperate with the rest of the world, MSWindows, even the free-as-in-free-beer "Home" version, should go to the minor effort of reporting the one-or-two-byte partition type flag that is part of their own partitioning scheme. A simple,

This partition appears to have data written by another operating system in it. You might want to check before you format it.

would be much more helpful than the current

 This partition appears to be empty. Do you want to format it?

Second. I'll offer some solutions, since it looks like other users are ending up in the same fix. But I will offer them in a separate post, to make them easier to find.

Third. The real fix for Microsoft's problems is something I've ranted about before, here, for instance.