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GRUB error/Hard drive not being recognised

  • 10-05-2010 3:47pm
    #1
    david p
    Registered Users Posts: 84 ✭✭


    Hey guys,

    Was just looking for a bit of help fixing my brother's laptop. We decided to reformat it a while ago and reinstall XP instead of Vista. That didn't work, and we didn't have the reinstallation CDs for Vista, so I just put Linux Mint on it instead.
    Since then, his hard drive has kind of been acting up for some reason. GRUB would load, but then Mint wouldn't boot properly, so we got a GParted Live CD and formatted again, mounting the partitions this time. We got a hold of the Vista installation CD and put it in, but we keep getting an error after the Acer splash screen that says something like:
    Error: Unknown File System
GRUB rescue

    For some reason, this keeps showing up after putting in the Vista CD, even after formatting the disk. I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that Mint was on there before, but I'm not sure. When we tried the XP CD, it said something about the drive not existing or something like that. It prompted us to press "R" to go into recovery mode, but that didn't work either. Anyways, was just wondering if anyone could shed some light on how to get Vista/XP to install without encountering any error messages? Is this a problem with the hard drive?
    Thanks in advance!

    edit:
    Okay we've gotten rid of the GRUB error, so it's not showing up anymore. Instead we're getting this:
    Non-system disk or disk error
Replace and press any key when ready

    We tried running fdisk through a DOS live CD and formatting the drive, but this still isn't working (maybe because fdisk formats drives using FAT32 instead of NTFS? I have no idea...). It's only recognising 8GB but the drive is 320GB.


Comments

  • #2
    bonzodog2
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,253 ✭✭✭bonzodog2


    I'm not 100% sure, but you can try this. AFAIK DOS and Windows only recognise their own partition types. Maybe MINT/GRUB has left behind some partitions. Get a live Linux CD, any kind, get a command prompt and type

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=512 count=4

    this will nuke the partition table (and a liitle more, 2kB) and make the disk look like a new unpartitioned, unformatted one


  • #3
    david p
    Registered Users Posts: 84 ✭✭david p


    He actually went ahead and fixed it himself. He made a live CD with some utilities on it and then was able to install Vista...
    Thanks for the help though, sorry for the pointless post! :o

    edit: In case anyone is wondering, I think it was Cute Partition Manager he used in the end.


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