Hey folks

just got a quick question..

i have a 160gb drive parted out with 25gb for windows 100gb for Edgy64 and 25gb that ive been using to try out different distros.

so .. heres whats up

everytime i try to uninstall a distro from the last partition i loose grub with it..
right now i have windows xp pro, ubuntu edgy64 , and linux mint bianca beta installed.
both mint and edgy installed a copy of grub onto hd0.. whats/wheres that..

why does grub dissapear with one distro if both installed it..
and why did xp dissapear from my boot list with the latest install.

up till now ive just been reinstalling linuxmint bea and lietting it fix grub with the installer.. but id like to be able to knock that off the drive completely and get GRUB back so i can still access my xp account as well as ubuntu..

if i just uninstall (i usually use gparted from disk and erase partition) the third distro im loosing grub
i just boot to a command prompt
which i dont know any commands for

anyways..
i tried to tell you as much as i could think of..
help would be awsome
i figure its something simple, like a way to put GRUB on the actual hard drive so it wont uninstall with the play distros or something
i dunno, thats why im asking
i want to learn

it sucks not knowing things like this too, cause ive been starting kids in school (who are dissapointed with vista ) on linux live disks of ubuntu and sabayon (sabayon live works beryl nice, and has quake and cold war demos.. so ya..) and i just cant answer all of their questions...

thanks again
-Josh

You are probably installing GRUB to the root superblock of the partition you are currently working on and the installer is setting the boot flag on it as well. When you wax that partition you basically lose its boot sector. You can install GRUB to the hard drives MBR but if you are using windows I don't think ntldr likes that.

Well you only need one copy of grub installed onto the MBR. Since the distros you are installing force a grub install, rather than giving you the option to install grub or lilo or none at all, they are going to override one another. In a situation such as yours, I say you livecd into your computer and manually mount your stuff. From there, you can backup and store elsewhere and then just reinsall ubuntu.

Quote: Originally Posted by fatsobob Well you only need one copy of grub installed onto the MBR. Since the distros you are installing force a grub install, rather than giving you the option to install grub or lilo or none at all, they are going to override one another. In a situation such as yours, I say you livecd into your computer and manually mount your stuff. From there, you can backup and store elsewhere and then just reinsall ubuntu.

do i really have to reinstall..
lol i finally got Edgy set up like i like it..

is there a way to uninstall a distro and keep grub??

id just reinstall something like dapper on the small partition and uninstall it again.. and try to keep grub that way.. lol..

as of now ubuntu is my main os,
i use windows for VB.net class, and games..

thats it..

anyways
any help is awsome
thanks
-j

Well another possible solution is to manually install GRUB from a livecd.
I now point your attention the the ubuntu wiki.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows
Though the circumstances are different, the solution remains the same.

there are a few things you could do. when I didn't know how to install grub, by my self, I just let the installer put the bootloader on the partition, the installer was working on, not the MBR, and I put GAG on the MBR. GAG is really, really easie to install. it comes on a cd, and you just turn the computer on, with it in. I had troubles getting it to load a kernel image, so I used the bootloader, on the partition, with the operating system, to load the kernel image. there's probably a way around it, but, I haven't used it, in a while, because I learnt that setting up grub, your self, isn't too hard.
you could also install it, for all your operating systems, from a livecd.
fatsobob already mentioned that