BombayNews wrote:
what actually happened was when the computer was switched on, I got the message :
Boot from CD: Disk Boot Failure. Insert System Disk and Press Enter
The system was back to normal after the engineer restored some corrupted XP files with a backup CD. Why should this be so? I thought GRUB was independent of XP and corruption in XP files would not matter. But the engineer says XP is the primary system installed on the machine with Linux running on other partitions so corrupted XP would mean that the machine would not start at all.
Could you explain what the engineer did to 'restore some' corrupted XP files with a backup CD? Did he do a re-install over the existing installation without a format? If so or even after a format and XP install, your grub would have been overwritten in the MBR and booting into linux would not be possible. If he tried sfc then the system would have returned to its original legal form with the 30 day activation key appearing.
"Boot from CD: Disk Boot Failure. Insert System Disk and Press Enter" indicates that your grub itself could have been corrupted.
Regards,
Rony. Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com