cannot boot after uninstall

[devid]

my setup: grub2 in mbr. ubuntu 10 on partition, xp sp3 with fd-isr on another partition.

i installed latest rbrx demo (9.1 2695569418). reboot. shows rb splash, shows grub2 screen, chose xp, fdisr splash, xp splash.. xp loads fine.

now, i unistalled rbrx from windows. reboot. rb uninstall screen > uninstall. reboot.

now, pc is continously rebooting. i have to enter bios setup to make it stop.

i insert hiren cd and boot from it. do a fdisk /mbr to make hd boot again (will have to reinstall grub2 again).

uninstall supposed to restore old mbr right? (which is grub2 in this case). i wonder what went wrong...

[HDS-Jacob]

Hello devid,

Welcome to the Horizon DataSys forum. Let's see if we can get suggestions for you here. Also, feel free to contact support at http://support.horizondatasys.com

Best,
Jacob

[carfal]

Originally Posted by devid

...i wonder what went wrong...

My first guess would be too many boot managers.

Secondly, Horizon have stated that they will not support FD ISR and Rollback install. They give a detailed document on the differences of the two here and recommend strongly to not run these two apps together.

They dont say that you cant run them together but wash their hands of any issues arising from this type of setup.

I myself for a time ran both these two apps together successfully but was very cautious not to update, create or delete any FD snapshots while Rollback was installed. This was because a subsequent Rollback snapshot would obviously preserve the old FD snapshot and would use a huge amount of diskspace. Not really compatible together so i stopped using FD and stuck with Rollback (hopefully all the snapshot talk is not confusing )

Lastly, Rollback is not compatible with linux and having a linux boot manager (as well) is probably not helping your cause.

[devid]

fortunately nothing was damaged. ubuntu and xp still boots and works after reinstalling grub to mbr.

maybe the installer should give a warning about installed software that would conflict with rollback rx. also warning for incompatibilities with certain boot managers, or file systems, etc..

[Owl]

In this sort of situation you really do need to make sure the RBRx boot console is confined to the XP partition MBR (you do have XP in its own partition?).

I'm not sure about Grub, but I have played with the XOSL boot manager and in that case I would create the XP installation in complete isolation from everything else, and install RBRx, before then adding it into the mix of other partitions.

[devid]

i didnt know it was possible to install rbrx to boot sector. but this would conflict with fdisr since its pre-boot hook is in boot sector.

as i remember, rbrx was able to chain grub properly and grub was able to boot both ubuntu and xp. the system was also working when rbrx was present. it was the uninstall/restore part that caused the problem.

[Owl]

Yes, thinking about it you are probably right. I'm not an expert but I imagine the boot console for RBRx only provides access to snapshot management, and does not contribute to the function of RBRx when the OS is booted.

I'm not sure what RBRx does in order to uninstall itself, but in a situation like this it might be as well to maintain backup copies of the MBR and shove the right one back yourself - as you have effectively done.