I re-installed Windows XP on my laptop for the sole purpose of playing American McGee’s Alice. And I blew away grub.

So, to reinstall it, I booted the Hardy LiveCD, and mounted some things:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/ubu
$ sudo mount /dev/hda5 /mnt/ubu/
$ sudo mount -t proc none /mnt/ubu/proc
$ sudo mount -o bind /dev /mnt/ubu/dev

I was able to determine the appropriate partition to mount by running “fdisk -l” before-hand.

Once mounted, I chrooted into the existing installation:

$ sudo chroot /mnt/ubu/ /bin/bash

Once in, I ran the following, and received the listed error:

# grub-install /dev/hda
/dev/hda does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

Crap. What to do now? So, after a little Googling, which I am quite fond of, I found the answer:

# grub-install –recheck /dev/hda
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Searching for GRUB installation directory … found: /boot/grub
Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script `grub-install’.

(fd0) /dev/fd0
(hd0) /dev/hda

Success! I can now boot myself back into a realm of happiness known as the Hardy Heron!

/cs