can't boot fresh install

[Alan Evans]

On Sat, Aug 8, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Alan Evans<ame.fedora at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just did a fresh install of F11 on a P4. The SATA hard disk was
> repatriated from a broken iMac.
>
> I didn't have install disks handy, so I downloaded the netinstall
> image and installed the whole thing over my home DSL. This took nearly
> a day and a half, and I don't want to repeat that process if I can
> avoid it.
>
> I instructed anaconda to remove everything and use the whole drive.
> The installer never complained of any trouble. When I went to reboot,
> the system refused to recognize the hard drive as bootable. I jacked
> around with BIOS settings to no avail. Finally, I booted from the
> install CD and selected rescue mode.
>
> Rescue mode mounted /dev/sda2 on /mnt/sysimage. I looked and the
> install appears intact.
>
> I ran fdisk on /dev/sda and it complained, "Device contains neither a
> valid DOS partition table, nor Sun, SGI or OSF disklabel." And then
> further down, "Warning: invalid flag 0x0000 of partition table 4 will
> be corrected by w(rite)." There are no partitions listed when I select
> "p" to do so.
>
> At this point, I'm petrified. What can be done to fix this and get
> Fedora to boot?

Ok, maybe I'm asking the wrong question...

Does anybody have an idea why anaconda/rescue mode can find and mount
my root partition on /dev/sda2, but fdisk can't even recognize that my
disk has a partition table at all?

-Alan