A couple of months back I installed SuSE 9.0 on my mam and dad's desktop. It's about 3 years old now, and was running Windows ME. The reasons for installing Linux were:

i) It's a multi-user machine, so having a system that respects file permissions and keeps administrator privileges from my computer illiterate ma and pa would be useful (I'm not isulting them, the just are only interested in using a PC for word processiong etc).

ii) Very unstable, riddled with bugs - I don't think I ever used it for a whole session, i.e. I never booted up, did my work and shut down without the system crashing at some point.

iii) Lots of spyware, premium rate dialers etc kept installing themselves - very annoying.

iv) PowerDVD wouldn't let my vorther change the region setting on the player - it previously autodetected the disc region, but now he couldn't even set it manually.

v) much easier for me to do work on when I'm home.

Before I left SuSE was working perfectly - I had even replaced the crippled version of Xine and got the winmodem working! It was dual booting with WinME as the default. Unfortunately no-one was all that keen on choosing Linux as they rarely used anything other than office and IE anyway.

Last night he rings me up to say he has reformatted the hard drive and is putting WinXP on. Apparently he was getting errors in Windows telling him the PC was out of memory whenever he tried to run a program. He tried booting into Linux (for about the second or third time in his life) but all he got was what he described as "snow".

He asked a mate of his who works in IT (at the University I think), and he said that there are files that conflict in Windows and Linux that corrupt the install of both. This is absolutely the first I have heard about this. So I have a few questions:

Is it true - how can Linux corrupt the Windows install and vice versa? I know nothing about this, and my machine is single boot SuSE Linux 8.2.

If it isn't true, what the hell is up with his PC - virus infection, hardware failure or what?

If it is true, could it have been fixed? Not much data was lost, as his backups were recent, but if I had been there with a copy of Knoppix or somesuch I reckon I could have got the rest of his stuff off of there. Why is this not to be found anywhere in the SuSE documentation?

I would be very grateful if someone could help explain this phenomenon, as I love using Linux, but I feel bad that my relative ignorance has cost my family time and effort

Hi,

Is it possible that he also formatted the Partition or Harddrive where Linux lives?

Maybe his PC doesn't meet the minimum system requirements to run XP?

I only know that, the Master Boot Record (MBR) gets overwritten by the Windows installer, not corrupted.

Since you have good backups, reinstall Linux and see, i't might be a Hardware problem since he can only see "snow".

The weird thing is, it's running XP fine. If I didn't explain right - Win ME and Linux weren't working, so he had to reformat and installed Win XP, which works fine (although it won't detect his modem - go figure )

Well if it`s running XP fine just do a fresh install of Linux and use the backups for your documents and settings!

linux wont corupt anything, you tell it it can have these partitions and it says "yes", and doesent leave those partitions, windows on teh other hand is like, you say, here you can ahve these partitions windows goes " I WANT THE WHOLE DRIVE", you go NO TAKES THESE windows: "im installing on the whole drivve, dont boss me around pathedic user!", you go, YOU LITTLE ******* *** * * * **** * * * * ** * * TAKE THESE DRIVES OR I WONT INSTALL YOU!@!!! windows goes "fine, but i aint gonna work right"

Quote:

Originally posted by SciYro linux wont corupt anything goTAKE THESE DRIVES OR I WONT INSTALL YOU!@!!! windows goes "fine, but i aint gonna work right"

Wow, it's the return of the MBR monster! SciYro: Just kidding, very good point!

I know all about the MBR problems, but I installed linux alongside ME fine. The question wasn't really about the XP install, but that the ME/SuSE dual boot system which was previously working perfectly crapped out for absolutely no apparent reason.

XP is not a problem as my brother's intention was to reformat the entire drive and install it, as neither ME or SuSE were working right for him. As I'm not going to be there all that often, I'm inclined to leave it that way, with the proviso that he installs all the security updates as soon as he gets online, as well as some anti-virus software and a firewall.

That has always been my understanding, but by brother's "computer expert" friend told him different. The only possibility of this happening would be for WinME to try reclaiming the extra partitions, but as far as I was aware Windows can't even "see" a linux partition.

His "expert" friend also told him both Windows and Linux have code written in to corrupt the other - needless to say I told him this was bull***t as far as linux is concerned. He says "how do you know, can you see all the things it does?", so I said "duh, what do you think the open-source thing is about?"

lol, linux was made and does try to suport everything, even MS stuff, its windows that tryed to "curupt" it, but windwos can see linux partitions, as the partition table is standard and any OS can use it and read it, windows likes to have 1 big partition, or at least all of them, thats probly what happened, you click "format disk" in the installer, and it rewrites the partition table as it sees fit, i never did like bulies

If your father crashed in Windoze Me, then it is quite possible that when re-booting the machine, the Windoze scandisk utility, upon seeing the other partition interpreted the partition space as bad sectors in the windoze drive and started to mark those areas as bad,... hence Windoze corrupting Linux.

The same thing does not happen in Linux as it is designed to recognize all filesystem types...

You should have installed Linux only on his machine and just told them that it was a custom version of Windoze,... Showed them how to use the equivalent open source stuff that they like to do on computers and called it a day.

Evil Scandisk!!

It certainly used to run scandisk at least once a day, because it was almost permanently crashing

Another possibility occured to me, because the MBR is on the DOS partition a virus could corrupt it (I think sobig does this?). It would explain how come Windows was being crap(pier than usual) and why SuSE wouldn't load. Tragically it also means that a indows boot disk could probvably have saved his system. Or knoppix, or Mandrake move, or just about anything.

One more question - would a Windows boot disk "fix" the MBR by overwriting it? If it did would there be a way to get Linux back on it? After all, the partitions will still be there, but the boot loader just won't have the option to load them.

sure, but in order to get linux to boot, it has to be a linux boot loader in the MBR , grub was made to suport other OS's beside linux

Its probably just a coincidence, there's no way they can corrupt each other.

Scandisk will not not mark foreign partitions (known as "unknown" partitions) as bad, thats only on a PHYSICAL level, when you choose the "scan surface" sector of the drive, and it only tests it on a physical level, ie. whether it can read data from it. Partitions are on a logical level, it can't read or decipher which part is of which file as it does not know the proper "coding", but it can read the data manually (ie. sector 121382 contains this data) which is why Windows tools that read Linux drives work.

Although as the Orwellian Trusted Computing from Microsoft comes around, it may be soon designed to overwrite Linux partitions. On a BIOS level...scrap the x86 by 2008!

Oh SciYro, Windows just installs the first active boot partition (marked active on Windows' FDISK, not linux's disk tools) it sees, you just have to prepare it before hand.


Probably it just overwrote the MBR, but you installed lilo on the root partition? Now the MBR points somewhere else, and booting no longer works properly. Do you have a boot disk? At worst, you need a reinstall.

Oh XP is more memory hungry than ME (good thing no leak though)! From having WinME I can guess you have a low memory computer (came out during the RDRAM first generation P4?) around 128 MB? Get more RAM. Linux is better at managing memory...

How did you boot into Linux anyway? Lilo still existed?

Ehhhh, not exactly right,... I actually had this problem before where scandisk used unpartitioned space in it's equations to detect what was good and what was not, obliterating uneffected windoze FAT space that was still good...

If Lilo or Grub was on the Boot sector of the drive rather than the MBR, then it is quite possible that scandisk nerfed the entire system somehow...

I'd disagree on the low memory error message in Windoze too. It could very well be just a poorly behaved installed app that was hogging physical memory, or a memory leak,... a virus could be the culprit as well.


I still think that Windoze scandisk miscalculated the partition start and stop regions akin to what I said before, marking as bad (not low-level mind you, as scandisk really has/had not low-level formating capabilities, just as you said), but just marked them bad on the FAT partition map... If Lilo or grub was on a FAT32 boot partition, then it would explain things. The other alternative would be an MBR virus... Only low level formating or over-writing it will wipe that.


Richey,...
Unless your parents are married to Windoze, I'd advise them to switch entirely to Linux. If they don't do any buying and installing of programs (tax software especially, as I know of no tax software for Linux in the UK, only internet apps for USA taxes), then you have nothing to worry about.

Yeah, getting them to make the full switch was the intention. I was hoping to get them acquainted with SuSE on a dual-boot system before pesuading them to really take the plunge.

The irony is that now a single boot Linux system would be more secure, stable and have a lot more functionality than the WinXP my brother has been "loaned".

With SuSE ~45mins installing, plus 20mins fixing Xine and installing nVidia drivers and setting dial-up passwords would give a fully functional desktop PC with dial-up internet access.

With XP basic install takes about 1h30mins (I tried it out of curiosity before doing SuSE8.1->8.2). No Office, unless paying for it or stealing it floats your boat. Modem is not detected (one in the eye for anyone who trolls these baords claiming Windows will get everything working out of the box - that is only because someone else did the hard work for you configuring it ), unlike SuSE 9.0 which detected my WINMODEM and got it to dial up (crapped out at the handshake, but only because I don't have the right password to hand).

So in twice the time, with twice the effort I could have a grey box with a pretty picture of some some hills that is good for only playing Solitaire . Not to mention that as soon as this box becomes internet capable it will be at risk of having exactly the same problem again.