Let me start by saying I have always had this same problem with every version of SuSE I have installed, sinc 9.1: I had to reinstall WinXP, and now my GRUB bootloader is gone, which is to be expected, however: When I try to repair it, using either the auto OR the custom repair options off of the install disk, I run into fstab entries problems. Right now I am trying to recover the bootloader for SuSE 10.1 x64, WinXP, & WinVista. I get these issues: ignore (or remove, neither works) debugfs /sys/kernal/debug no auto and ignore /(or remove, neither works) /dev/sda2 /data2 vfat yadda yadda (it's for my iPod) When it does: "Check Package Database" It tells me that all of the hard drives cannot be mounted. Can someone tell me how I can repair, or rebuild, or build a new bootloader WITHOUT having to do a fresh install? Someone told me to "chroot" into into SuSE, but when I do a man chroot command, it doesn't say anything about how to use it really, so I have no idea how to do it. PLEASE, can someone help me on this? Thanks.
The info grub pages are pretty good. The amn pages don't have much to offer. Type info grub into a terminal and then go to the "invoking grub-install" section. FWIW, the problem is created by MSWindows which insists on overwriting the MBR when installed; it's not a Linux problem. Since I don't run MSWindows at all, and haven't since the Win98 days, I can't give you much guidance on this, but I do understand that it is possible to get the Windows bootloader (NTLDR <?>) to boot Linux and this eliminated the MBR issues with grub and lilo.
You can boot from a rescue CD like Knoppix, then mount your hard drive and then chroot to the mounted hard drive, though the chroot is not necessary. You can then try to fix fstab.
