Once again, thank you Microshaft.

I was using a dual-boot setup - Debian 3.1 (or so it "will" be called) on my pri-master and Windows XP on my pri-slave, with GRUB as my boot loader in my /boot partition (I believe) hda1.

I was running short of space on my WinXP drive hdb (it was only 10GB, after all) decided to move it to the 10GB of unallocated space at the end of hda. The difference in sizes would leave me with 150MB of unallocated space on hda and I could then swap hdb for a 40GB drive.

The WinXP partition Ghosted okay from hdb1 to hda4. When I went in to edit my GRUB configuration (/boot/grub/menu.lst) I commented out the original Windows entry and enabled the following:

What was working:
What doesn't work now:
The first block was manually added by me, per suggestion from a post (I wish I could remember where) on-line. The two "map" lines in the second block of code were added by me, per suggestion of a couple of posts I found on this site, the rest was autogenerated during the Debian install.

My problem is that now NONE of it works. And I can't figure out what the deal is. I have "some" idea where things could have gone wrong, but no idea how to fix it. The indications that I get when trying to boot are as follows:

Windoze version -
"rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (1,0) (0,0)
invalid device command" or something of this sort

Windows NT/2000/XP version -
basically the same thing except when I remove the "map" lines and then I get this:
"<Windows System>\system32\hal.dll is corrupted or missing"

I've mounted it under Linux and looked at it (did NOT touch it in any other way) and it is there. So it must be corrupted, right? But I've never had Ghost tell me it copied a file correctly and then have the file be corrupted.

Anyway, I attempted to boot into the old Windows install so I could copy the file over and that's when IT quit working.

Is that confusing enough? Can anyone help me out here? My next step is brute force, and I really would like to learn how to fix this rather than kill it.

"The WinXP partition Ghosted okay from hdb1 to hda4."

Whenever you copy a file block for block to another hard drive and the two hard drives have different geometry you screw up anything that depends on absolute hard drive addresses. Bootloaders often depend on absolute hard drive addresses.

"But I've never had Ghost tell me it copied a file correctly and then have the file be corrupted."

Ghost did not corrupt anything. But all of your blocks ended up at different absolute addresses on hda4 than they had on hdb1.

"My problem is that now NONE of it works."

The way to get out of this mess is to install a Linux system on hda1. Boot into the Linux system and configure grub correctly for Linux and the Windows on hdb1. Then run grub-install.

--------------------------------
Steve Stites

"The WinXP partition Ghosted okay from hdb1 to hda4."

Whenever you copy a file block for block to another hard drive and the two hard drives have different geometry you screw up anything that depends on absolute hard drive addresses. Bootloaders often depend on absolute hard drive addresses.

"But I've never had Ghost tell me it copied a file correctly and then have the file be corrupted."

Ghost did not corrupt anything. But all of your blocks ended up at different absolute addresses on hda4 than they had on hdb1.

"My problem is that now NONE of it works."

The way to get out of this mess is to install a Linux system on hda1 if you don't already have a working Linux system on hda1. Boot into the Linux system and configure grub correctly for Linux and the Windows on hdb1. You might also add the Windows on hda4 as a third bootable system but that has a low probability of success. Then run grub-install.

--------------------------------
Steve Stites